We modify the Laubach-Williams and Holston-Laubach-Williams models of the natural rate of interest to account for time-varying volatility and a persistent COVID supply shock during the pandemic. Resulting estimates of the natural rate of interest in the United States, Canada, and the Euro Area...

Structural time series models are formulated in terms of components, such as trends, seasonals and cycles, that have a direct interpretation. As well as providing a framework for time series decomposition by signal extraction, they can be used for forecasting and for ‘nowcasting’. The...

This paper studies the evolution of long-run output and labour productivity growth rates in the G-7 countries during the post-war period. We estimate the growth rates consistent with a constant unemployment rate using time-varying parameter models that incorporate both stochastic volatility and...

This paper revisits the issue of conditional volatility in real GDP growth rates for Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Previous studies find high persistence in the volatility. This paper shows that this finding largely reflects a nonstationary variance. Output growth in...

This study examines the effect of the Great Moderation on the relationship between U.S. output growth and its volatility over the period 1947 to 2006. First, we consider the possible effects of structural change in the volatility process. In so doing, we employ GARCH-M and ARCH-M specifications...

The Great Moderation, the significant decline in the variability of economic activity, provides a most remarkable feature of the macroeconomic landscape in the last twenty years. A number of papers document the beginning of the Great Moderation in the US and the UK. In this paper, we use the...

This study examines the relationship between U.S. output growth and its volatility over the period 1875:Q1 to 2008:Q2. We examine the data for outliers and apply corrections when found. Next, we search for possible effects of structural breaks in the growth rate and its volatility. In so doing,...

Recently, Fagiolo et al. (2008) find fat tails of economic growth rates after adjusting for outliers, autocorrelation, and heteroskedasticity. This paper employs US quarterly real output growth, showing that this finding of fat tails may reflect the Great Moderation. That is, leptokurtosis...

We propose an unobserved components model with stochastic volatility and structural shocks to explore the relevant factors that influence trend inflation in the USA. Using structural shocks that incorporate a broad set of information for the US economy, we find that four structural shocks have...

In this discussion paper we introduce time-varying parameters in the dynamic Nelson–Siegel yield curve model for the simultaneous analysis and forecasting of interest rates of different maturities. The Nelson–Siegel model has been recently reformulated as a dynamic factor model with vector...