The paper estimates a model for the real U.S./U.K. exchange rate. The Kalman filter is used to identify a permanent and transitory component. We find the variance of the transitory component shifts among three states according to a Markov-switching process. The model is estimated by Gibbs...

More than thirty years ago Milton Friedman proposed a "plucking" model of business fluctuations in which output cannot exceed a ceiling level, but will, from time to time, be plucked downward by recession. The model implied that business fluctuations are asymmetric, that recessions have only a...

Though Hamilton's (1989) Markov switching model has been widely estimated in various contexts, formal testing for Markov switching is not straightforward. Univariate tests in the classical framework by Hansen (1992) and Garcia (1998) do not reject the linear model for GDP. We present Bayesian...

In this paper, we consider estimation of a time-varying parameter model for a forward-looking monetary policy rule, by employing ex-post data. A Heckman-type (1976) two-step procedure is employed in order to deal with endogeneity in the regressors. This allows us to econometrically take into...

Economic time-series data is commonly categorized into a discrete number of persistent regimes. I survey a variety of approaches for real-time prediction of these regimes and the turning points between them, where these predictions are formed in a data-rich environment. I place particular...