We study the usefulness of unit-root tests as diagnostic tools for selecting forecasting models. Difference-stationary and trend-stationary models of economic and financial time series often imply very different predictions, so deciding which model to use is tremendously important for applied...

The authors consider the forecasting of cointegrated variables and they show that, at long horizons, nothing is lost by ignoring cointegration when forecasts are evaluated using standard multivariate forecast accuracy measures. In fact, simple univariate Box-Jenkins forecasts are just as...

We propose and evaluate explicit tests of the null hypothesis of no difference in the accuracy of two competing forecasts. In contrast to previously developed tests, a wide variety of accuracy measures can be used (in particular, the loss function need not be quadratic and need not even be...

Motivated by recent developments in the bounded rationality and strategic complementarity literatures, the authors examine an intentionally simple and stylized aggregative economic model, when the assumptions of fully rational expectations and no strategic interactions are relaxed. They show...

In the first half of this century, special attention was given to two features of the business cycle: the comovement of many individual economic series and the different behavior of the economy during expansions and contractions. Recent theoretical and empirical research has revived interest in...

Does the termination probability of a business expansion or contraction increase with age? This question may be formally addressed by analyzing the nature of duration dependence in aggregate economic activity. The author's null hypothesis is that there is no duration dependence, which they test...

In this paper, the authors assert that most studies that have sought to determine the validity of purchasing power parity are flawed for two reasons. First, post-1973 data contain, by definition, only a very limited amount of the low-frequency information relevant for examination of long-run...