What drives the recent inflation surge? To answer this question, one must decompose inflation fluctuations into the contribution of structural shocks. We document how whimsical such a historical shock decomposition can be in standard vector autoregressive (VAR) models. We show that the...

Dynamic equilibrium models are specifted to track time series with unit root-like behavior. Thus, unit roots are typically introduced and the optimality conditions adjusted. This step requires tedious algebra and often leads to algebraic mistakes, especially in models with several unit roots. We...

The paper proposes a technique to jointly tests for groupings of unknown size in the cross sectional dimension of a panel and estimates the parameters of each group, and applies it to identifying convergence clubs in income per-capita. The approach uses the predictive density of the data,...

We examine the relationship between institutions, culture and cyclical fluctuations for a sample of 45 European, Middle Eastern and North African countries. Better governance is associated with shorter and less severe contractions and milder expansions. Certain cultural traits, such as lack of...

We study what happens to identified shocks and to dynamic responses when the data generating process features q disturbances but less than q variables are used in the empirical model. Identified shocks are mongrels: they are linear combinations of current and past values of all structural...

I study potentials and gaps, permanent and transitory fluctuations in macroeconomic variables using the Smets and Wouter (2007) model. Model-based gaps display low frequency variations; possess more than business cycle fluctuations; have similar frequency representation as potentials, and are...

This paper describes a package which uses MATLAB functions and routines to estimate VARs, local projections and other models with classical or Bayesian methods. The toolbox allows a researcher to conduct inference under various prior assumptions on the parameters, to produce point and density...

We consider a set of potentially misspecified structural models, geometrically combine their likelihood functions, and estimate the parameters using composite methods. In a Monte Carlo study, composite estimators dominate likelihood-based estimators in mean squared error and composite models are...

We study what happens to identified shocks and to dynamic responses when the data generating process features q disturbances but q1 q variables are used in an empirical model. Identified shocks are linear combinations of current and past values of all structural disturbances and do not...