The structural vector autoregression (SVAR) and simultaneous equation macroeconometric model (SEM) styles of empirical macroeconomic modelling are compared and contrasted, with reference to two models of the UK economy, namely the long-run structural VAR model of Garratt, Lee, Pesaran and Shin...

The structural vector autoregression (SVAR) and simultaneous equation macroeconometric model (SEM) styles of empirical macroeconomic modelling are compared and contrasted, with reference to two models of the UK economy, namely the Cambridge long-run structural VAR model and the COMPACT model....

This article analyses the role of technical progress in three models of the UK economy. In the standard neoclassical growth model, the growth of the economy is dictated by the growth rate of technical progress plus that of the population. Our two simulation experiments, increasing the level of...

This article analyses the properties of five leading macroeconometric models of the UK economy, in the light of the current discussion of monetary and fiscal policy-making. In simulation experiments, the interest rate and the basic rate of income tax are used to target the inflation rate and to...

This article examines the statistical issues surrounding the Bank of England's density forecast of inflation and its presentation as a 'fan chart'. The Bank's preferred central projection is the mode of the density but this underestimates 'average inflation over a number of years' in terms of...

This article provides a practical evaluation of some leading density forecast scoring rules in the context of forecast surveys. We analyse the density forecasts of UK inflation obtained from the Bank of England’s Survey of External Forecasters, considering both the survey average forecasts...

This paper reviews recently proposed likelihood ratio tests of goodness-of-fit and independence of interval forecasts. It recasts them in the framework of Pearson chi-squared statistics, and extends them to density forecasts. Two further recent developments are also incorporated, namely a more...