We investigate business cycle dynamics for 26 countries, estimating a set of nonlinear models for real GDP where appropriate. We find a great deal of heterogeneity in the dynamics of real output growth across countries. At the same time, a common feature is the asymmetric response of real GDP to...

This dissertation consists of three essays. Chapter II uses the method of structuralfactor analysis to study the effects of monetary policy on key macroeconomic variablesin a data rich environment. I propose two structural factor models. One is the structuralfactor augmented vector...

In this dissertation three different economic issues have been analyzed. The firstissue is whether monetary policy rules can improve forecasting accuracy of inflation.The second is whether the preference of a central bank is symmetry or not. The last issueis whether the behavior of aggregate...

This dissertation consists of three essays. Chapter II examines the possibleasymmetric response of gasoline prices to crude oil price changes using an errorcorrection model with GARCH errors. Recent papers have looked at this issue. Some ofthese papers estimate a form of error correction model,...

The dissertation studies the relationship among durable goods, price indexes andmonetary policy in two sticky-price models with durable goods. One is a one-sectormodel with only durable goods and the other is a two-sector model with durable andnon-durable goods.In the models with durable goods,...

Numerous articles have investigated the distribution of share prices, and find that the yields are leptokurtic. There is still controversy about the amount of leptokurtosis, and hence about the most appropriate distribution to use in modeling returns. This controversy has proven hard to resole,...

Texas has been an important player in the emergence of the charter school industry. We test for a competitive effect of charters by looking for changes in student achievement in traditional public schools following charter market penetration. We use an eight-year panel of data on individual...