The author describes results obtained by using a new methodology to estimate potential output for the United Kingdom. The estimation method, which follows Rennison (2003) and Gosselin and Lalonde (2002), shows that combining the use of a Hodrick-Prescott filter and a structural vector...

Using French data on industrial firms over the period 1989-2001, the authors estimate a "flexible" Translog production function that accounts for the volumes and durations of factor utilization. They draw on the framework proposed by Blundell and Bond (2000), assuming that serially correlated...

A number of authors have suggested that economies face a long-run inflation-unemployment trade-off due to downward nominal-wage rigidity. This theory has implications for the nature of the short-run Phillips curve when wage inflation is low. Akerlof, Dickens and Perry have developed an empirical...

Inflation distorts an economy through many channels. This paper highlights the interaction between inflation and capital gains tax and how they distort an economy through the financial market. Several observations motivate this research. First, capital formation or investment is an important...

The argument advocating a moderate level of inflation based on the downward nominal-wage rigidity (DNWR) hypothesis rests on three factors: its presence, extent, and negative impact in the labour market. This paper focuses on the employment effect of DNWR. It reviews the evidence presented by...

Our paper reports on Monte Carlo experiments using Evans's data-generating process to gauge the performance of these two kinds of regime-switching tests.

Model risk is a constant danger for financial economists using interest-rate forecasts for the purposes of monetary policy analysis, portfolio allocations, or risk-management decisions. Use of multiple models does not necessarily solve the problem as it greatly increases the work required and...

This paper examines the performance of M1 in an indicator model of inflation over time horizons as long as 16 quarters into the future. The central conclusion of the paper is that, in addtion to the output gap, the cumulative growth of M1 and the deviations of M1 from its long-run path provide...

The debate on the order of integration of interest rates has long focused on the I(1) versus I(0) distinction. In this paper, we use instead the wavelet OLS estimator of Jensen (1999) to estimate the fractional integration parameters of several interest rates for the United States and Canada...

Several recent papers have presented evidence from foreign exchange and other markets suggesting that the log of excess returns can be characterized as first-order integrated processes (I(1)). This contrasts sharply with the "conventional" wisdom that log prices are integrated of order one I(1)...