This paper proposes a probabilistic model based on comovements and nonlinearities useful to assess the type of shock affecting each phase of the business cycle. By providing simultaneous inferences on the phases of real activity and inflation cycles, contractionary episodes are dated and...

In this paper we show that the MSCI ACWI Metals and Mining Index has the ability to predict base metal prices. We use both in-sample and out-of-sample exercises to conduct such examination. The theoretical underpinning of these results relies on the present-value model for stock-price...

This paper analyzes the dynamical properties of monetary models with regime switching. We start with the analysis of the evolution of inflation when policy is guided by a simple monetary rule where coefficients switch with the policy regime. We rule out the possibility of a Hopf bifurcation and...

We address the problem of selecting the common factors that are relevant for forecasting macroeconomic variables. In economic forecasting using diffusion indexes the factors are ordered, according to their importance, in terms of relative variability, and are the same for each variable to...

We search for evidence against the hypothesis of a non-linear relationship between inflation and growth rates for 1993-2012 Peruvian data. A family of dichotomous models provide the way to model the relationship between the those two variables' cycles. Given the acceleration/de-acceleration...

In this paper we introduce a structural non-linear time series model for joint estimation of capacity and its utilisation, thereby providing the statistical underpinnings to a measurement problem that has received ad hoc solutions, often underlying arbitrary assumptions. The model we propose is...

The paper focuses on the comparison of the direct and iterated AR predictors when Xt is a difference stationary process. In particular, it provides some useful results for comparing the efficiency of the two predictors and for extracting the trend from macroeconomic time series using the two...

We develop a multivariate filter which is an optimal (in the mean squared error sense) approximation to the ideal filter that isolates a specified range of fluctuations in a time series, e.g., business cycle fluctuations in macroeconomic time series. This requires knowledge of the true...

This paper proposes a simple technical approach for the derivation of future (forward) point-in-time PD forecasts, with minimal data requirements. The inputs required are the current and future through-the-cycle PDs of the obligors, their last known default rates, and a measure for the...

We resort to a rigorous definition of spectrum of an integrated time series in order to characterise the implications of applying linear filters to such series. We conclude that in the presence of integrated series the transfer function of the filters has exactly the same interpretation as in...