This paper discusses several popular methods to estimate the ‘output gap’. It provides a unified, natural concept for the analysis, and demonstrates how to decompose the output gap into contributions of observed data on output, inflation, unemployment, and other variables. A simple bar-chart...

This paper proposes a novel way of formulating priors for estimating economic models. System priors are priors about the model's features and behavior as a system, such as the sacrifice ratio or the maximum duration of response of inflation to a particular shock, for instance. System priors...

The paper introduces methods that allow analysts to (i) decompose the estimates of unobserved quantities into observed data and (ii) impose subjective prior constraints on path estimates of unobserved shocks in structural economic models. For instance, decomposition of output gap to output,...

This note demonstrates a decomposition of correlations into contributions of structural shocks. The method is useful for analysis of complex models that can be expressed as linear state-space models, e.g., DSGE, SVAR or dynamic factor models.

The paper discusses the role of stochastic trends in DSGE models and effects of stochastic detrending. We argue that explicit structural assumptions on trend behavior is convenient, namely for emerging countries. In emerging countries permanent shocks are an important part of business cycle...

This paper comments on selected aspects of identification issues of DSGE models. It suggests the singular value decomposition (SVD) as a useful tool for detecting local weak and non-identification. This decomposition is useful for checking rank conditions of identification, identification...

The purpose of the paper is to introduce the new “g3†structural model of the Czech National Bank and illustrate how it is used for forecasting and policy analysis. As from January 2007 the model was regularly used for shadowing official forecasts, and in July 2008 it became the core...

This paper comments on selected aspects of identification issues of DSGE models. It suggests the singular value decomposition (SVD) as a useful tool for detecting local weak and non-identification. This decomposition is useful for checking rank conditions of identification, identification...