#2009-055A "Common Fluctuations in OECD Budget Balances"
by Christopher J. Neely, and David E. Rapach
October 2009

We analyze comovements in four measures of budget surpluses for 18 OECD countries for 1980–2008 with a dynamic latent factor model. More...

#2009-054A "Are U.S. Banks too Large?"
by David C. Wheelock, and Paul Wilson
October 2009

The substantial consolidation of the U.S. banking industry since the mid-1980s has brought a large increase in average (and median) bank size, which along with concerns about banks that are “too-big-to-fail,” has led many analysts to wonder whether banks are “too large.” More...

#2009-051A "In-Sample Tests of Predictive Ability: A New Approach"
by Todd E. Clark, and Michael W. McCracken
October 2009

This paper presents analytical, Monte Carlo, and empirical evidence linking in-sample tests of predictive content and out-of-sample forecast accuracy. More...

#2009-050A "Nested Forecast Model Comparisons: A New Approach to Testing Equal Accuracy"
by Todd E. Clark, and Michael W. McCracken
October 2009

This paper develops bootstrap methods for testing whether, in a finite sample, competing out-of-sample forecasts from nested models are equally accurate. More...

#2009-048A "The Local Effects of Monetary Policy"
by Neville Francis, Michael T. Owyang, and Tatevik Sekhposyan
September 2009

Previous studies have documented disparities in the regional responses to monetary policy shocks; this variation has been found to depend, in part, on differences in the industrial composition of the regional economies. However, because of computational issues, the literature has often neglected the richest level of disaggregation: the city. More...

#2009-037A "The Identification of the Response of Interest Rates to Monetary Policy Actions Using Market-Based Measures of Monetary Policy Shocks"
by Daniel L. Thornton
August 2009

It is common practice to estimate the response of asset prices to monetary policy actions using market-based measures of monetary policy shocks, such as the federal funds futures rate. More...

#2009-030A "Does Money Matter in Inflation Forecasting?"
by Jane M. Binner, Peter Tino, Jonathan Tepper, Richard G. Anderson, Barry Jones, and Graham Kendall
June 2009

This paper provides the most fully comprehensive evidence to date on whether or not monetary aggregates are valuable for forecasting US inflation in the early to mid 2000s. More...

#2009-014A "Journal Rankings in Economics: Handle with Care"
by Howard J. Wall
April 2009

Nearly all journal rankings in economics use some weighted average of citations to calculate a journal’s impact. These rankings are often used, formally or informally, to help assess the publication success of individual economists or institutions. More...

PUBLISHED: B.E. Press Journals (Economic Analysis and Policy), 2009, 9(1), Article 34

#2009-013A "The Propagation of Regional Recessions"
by James D. Hamilton, and Michael T. Owyang
April 2009

This paper develops a framework for inferring common Markov-switching components in a panel data set with large cross-section and time-series dimensions. We apply the framework to studying similarities and differences across U.S. states in the timing of business cycles. More...

#2009-008A "Robust, Dynamic Nonparametric Benchmarking: The Evolution of Cost-Productivity and Efficiency Among U.S. Credit Unions"
by David C. Wheelock, and Paul Wilson
March 2009

This paper develops a new methodology for estimating cost-productivity and efficiency change that benchmarks the performance of individual firms against an estimated α-quantile. More...