Many modeling issues and policy debates in macroeconomics depend on whether macroeconomic times series are best characterized as linear or nonlinear. If departures from linearity exist, it is important to know whether these are endogenously generated (as in, for example, a threshold...

Many structural break and regime-switching models have been used with macroeconomic and financial data. In this paper, we develop an extremely flexible parametric model that accommodates virtually any of these specifications - and does so in a simple way that allows for straightforward Bayesian...

In their influential work on the consumption-wealth relationship, Lettau and Ludvigson found that while consumption responds to permanent changes in wealth in the expected manner, most changes in wealth are transitory with no effect on consumption. We investigate the robustness of these results...

A message coming out of the recent Bayesian literature on cointegration is that it is important to elicit a prior on the space spanned by the cointegrating vectors (as opposed to a particular identified choice for these vectors). In this note, we discuss a sensible way of eliciting such a prior....

This paper discusses Bayesian inference in change-point models. Existing approaches involve placing a (possibly hierarchical) prior over a known number of change-points. We show how two popular priors have some potentially undesirable properties (e.g. allocating excessive prior weight to...

In this paper we introduce and implement new techniques to investigate threshold effects in air pollution-mortality relationships. Our key interest is in measuring the dose-response relationship above and below a given threshold level where we allow for a large number of potential explanatory...

We describe procedures for Bayesian estimation and testing in both cross sectional and longitudinal data smooth coefficient models (with and without endogeneity problems). The smooth coefficient model is a generalization of the partially linear or additive model wherein coefficients on linear...

The authors examine dynamic asymmetries in U.S. unemployment using nonlinear time series models and Bayesian methods. They find strong statistical evidence in favor of a two-regime threshold autoregressive model. Empirical results indicate that, once parameter and model uncertainty are both...

We develop Bayesian methods of analysis for a new class of Threshold Autoregressive models: Endogenous Delay Threshold. We apply our methods to the commonly used sunspot data data set and find strong evidence in favor of the EDTAR model over linear and tranditional threshold autoregressions.