Macroeconomic uncertainty—the conditional volatility of the unforecastable component of a future value of a time series—shows considerable variation in the data. A typical assumption in business cycle models is that production is Cobb-Douglas. Under that assumption, this paper shows there is...

Whether fiscal policy is sustainable depends on a government's future revenue and expenditure streams, both of which are highly uncertain. In commodity-rich countries, this problem is intensified by unpredictable and volatile commodity prices. We show how spending rules for oil income and...

We study the impact of different central bank communication practices on the trading behavior and profitability of fast and slow traders in the foreign exchange market. We focus, in particular, on how the Bank of Japan's practice of introducing some randomness to the time at which it releases...

In this paper we develop a mixed frequency dynamic factor model featuring stochastic shifts in the volatility of both the latent common factor and the idiosyncratic components. We take a Bayesian perspective and derive a Gibbs sampler to obtain the posterior density of the model parameters. This...

Recent work has analyzed the forecasting performance of standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, but little attention has been given to DSGE models that incorporate nonlinearities in exogenous driving processes. Against that background, we explore whether incorporating...

We show that there is strong commonality in the volatility of a wide range of diversified equity portfolios. Common factor volatility (CFV) exists even when factor or anomaly returns are market-adjusted and does not appear to be attributable to common microstructure noise or a lack of...

Recent work has analyzed the forecasting performance of standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, but little attention has been given to DSGE models that incorporate nonlinearities in exogenous driving processes. Against that background, we explore whether incorporating...

In this paper we compare the cyclical features implied by an RBC model with two technology shocks under several statistical specifications for the stochastic processes governing technological change. We conclude that while a trend-stationary model accounts better for the observed volatilities, a...