A Comparison of FIML and Robust Estimates of a Nonlinear Macroeconomic Model

The prediction accuracy of six estimators of econometric models are compared. Two of rthe estimators are ordinary least squares (OLS) and full-information maximum likelihood. (FML). The other four estimators are robust estimators in the sense that they give less weight to large residuals. One of the four estimators is approximately equivalent to the least-absolute-residual (LAR) estimator, one is a combination of OLS for small residuals and LAR for large residuals, one is an estimator proposed by John W. Tukey, and one is a combination of FIML and LAR. All of the estimators account for the first-order serial correlation of the error terms. The main conclusion is that robust estimators appear quite promising for the estimation of econometric models. Of the robust estimators considered in the paper, the one based on minimizing the sum of the absolute values of the residuals performed the best. The FIML estimator and the combination of the FIML and LAR estimators also appear promising.

Estimated Effects of the October 1979 Change in Monetary Policy on the 1980 Economy

On October 6. 1979, the Federal Reserve announced what most people interpreted as a change in monetary policy. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effects of this change on the 1980-81 economy. The effects of the change are estimated from simulations with my model of the U.S. economy (1976, 1980b).

Estimated Inflation Costs Had European Unemployment Been Reduced in the 1980s by Macro Prices

This paper uses a multicountry econometric model to estimate what the inflation costs would have been if macropolicies had reduced European unemployment in the 1982:1-1990:4 period. A "non-NAIRU" framework is proposed for thinking about these costs.

The Great Gatsby: Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Oxford

Where did Fitzgerald get the idea of having Clay's Economics reside in Nick Carraway's library?

Does Monetary Policy Matter? Narrative Versus Structural Approaches

This paper compares results from the narrative approach of Romer and Romer (1989) to those from the structural approach regarding the effects of monetary policy on real output. The results from both approaches lead to the conclusions that monetary policy matters and that the effects build slowly following a monetary policy shock. The narrative approach, however, leads to larger and more persistent effects than does the structural approach. Reasons are advanced in the paper as to why this might be so.

Estimated Macroeconomic Effects of Deficit Targeting

Somemacroeconomic effects of deficit targeting are estimated in thispaper using my U.S. econometric model. The response of the economy to realand price shocks is examined in a number of cases. Each case corresponds toa particular assumption about fiscal policy and a particular assumptionabout monetary policy. Estimates are also presented of the size of thegovernment spending cuts that are needed to meet a given deficit goal underdifferent assumptions about monetary policy.

International Evidence on the Demand for Money

One of the current questions in the literature on the demand for money is whether the adjustment of actual to desired money holdings is in nominal or real terms. This paper describes a simple procedure than can be used to test the nominal against the real hypothesis. The test is carried out for 27 countries. The paper also tests the structural stability of the demand for money equations and the correctness of the dynamic specification. The results are strongly in favor of the nominal adjustment hypothesis. The estimated equations are quite good in terms of the number of coefficient estimates that are of the right sign and that are significant. The equations also stand up well when tested against a more general dynamic specification. There is, however, some evidence of structural instability before and after 1973, although the instability is generally moderate. The instability does not affect the conclusion that the nominal adjustment hypothesis dominates the real adjustment hypothesis.

Sources of Output and Price Variability in a Macroeconometric Model

There has been much recent discussion about the ultimate sources of macroeconomic variability. A number of authors attribute most of this variability to only a few sources, sometimes only one. Although there may be only a few important sources, this is far from obvious, since economies seem complicated. The purpose of this paper is to provide quantitative estimates of various sources of variability using my U.S. econometric model. Stochastic simulation is used to estimate how much the overall variances of real GNP and the GNP deflator are reduced when various shocks are suppressed in the model. The results show two main things. The first is that the contribution of a given shock to the variance can vary considerably as the length ahead of the prediction varies. What is important for the one-quarter-ahead prediction may not be important for the eight-quarter-ahead prediction, and vice versa. The second is that the results imply that there are many important sources of variability for real GNP. It is not the case that one or two sources dominate. This is less true for the GNP deflator, however, where there are two very important sources, shocks to the price and wage equations and shocks to the price of imports, and one moderately important one, shocks to the government exogenous variables.