We use the dispersion of the Federal Budget Balance forecasts from Consensus Economics to produce a new measure of fiscal uncertainty; constant horizon forecasts are obtained through mixture distributions. The scheme we propose has several advantages over previous uncertainty measures. First (as...

This letter evaluates two types of forecasts from probit models that use the slope of the yield curve (“term spread”) to forecast NBER recessions, using an evaluation toolkit common in statistics and meteorology. The probit models provide excellent non-probabilistic yes/no predictions of...

Using three different econometric methodologies, this paper identifies business cycles fluctuations in Canadian regions using quarterly real GDP for the period 1961:1 - 2000:1. With the estimates of the transitory and permanent components, as well as filtered and smoothed probabilities of being...

This paper analyses the effect of labour taxes on Euro area unemployment. Empirical estimates obtained so far can be criticised as being spurious because the regressions generally lack non-measurable variables constituting the reservation wage that can possibly be non stationary. Here we...

Cet article présente les contributions originelles et essentielles de T. Sargent et C. Sims à la modélisation macro-économétrique. Après avoir exposé leur critique de la modélisation existante, cet article s'attache à préciser l'originalité de leurs approches respectives. La...

This paper focuses on the real – as opposed to the monetary – side of the economy to explain price dynamics in Japan between 1981 and 2001. We use a panel industry dataset to examine the impact of institutional and structural factors on the heterogeneous price dynamics in 10...

This paper explores the existence of a bounce-back effect in inventory investment using the European Commission opinion survey on stocks of finished products in manufacturing and retail trade sectors for France, Germany and a European aggregate, from 1985q1 to 2011q4. Our empirical findings...