One criticism of Vector Autoregression (VAR) forecasting is that macroeconomic variables tend not to behave as linear functions of their own past around business cycle turning points. A large amount of literature therefore focuses on nonlinear forecasting models, such as Markov switching models,...

This article presents a non-Markovian regime switching model in which the regime states depend on the sign of an autoregressive latent variable. The magnitude of the latent variable indexes the `strength' of the state or how deeply the system is embedded in the current regime. The autoregressive...

This paper extends McCallum?s (1987) nominal targeting rule to a small open economy by allowing for feedback from the exchange rate. Instead of setting parameters in a McCallum-type targeting rule and simulating, the parameters are estimated using a markov switching model. We argue that a model...

The Chicago Board Options Exchange concurrently listed European-style and American-style options on the Standard and Poor?s 500 Index from April 2, 1986 through June 20, 1986. We match near-the-money American option quotes with the most nearly contemporaneous, otherwise identical, European...

This article presents a new business cycle index that allows for cycle-to-cycle comparisons of the depth of recessions within a country, cross-country comparisons of business cycle correlation, and simple aggregation to arrive at a measure of a European business cycle. The data augmentation...