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A reduced-form investigation reveals that the relationship between the level of inflation and its volatility in the USA may not have been monotonic. This paper quantifies a reversal of the relationship by considering linear and nonlinear estimation methodologies on the trend and volatility of inflation. Our findings suggest that the spikes in inflation volatility in the period after 2008 are related to transitory, rather than permanent movements in inflation, suggesting that the US Great Moderation period may be merely on hold, rather than over with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the performance of Markov switching models of the exchange rate using a data-driven approach to determine the number of regimes rather than simply assuming two states. The analysis is conducted for the British pound, Canadian dollar, and Japanese yen exchange rates against the US dollar over the last 30 years with alternative specifications including a simple segmented trends model and Markov switching autoregressive models with monetary fundamentals. A noteworthy finding is that the number of regimes that minimizes mean square forecast errors tends to correspond to the number of regimes selected by Bayesian information criteria (but not Markov-switching-specific information criteria). For the monetary models, the number of regimes that minimizes forecast errors also tends to correspond to the most parsimonious model with well-behaved residuals. Although allowing for more regimes yields forecasting improvement over single- or two-regime models, the Markov switching model is still unable to outperform a random walk. This suggests that exchange rate models need to allow for novel, as opposed to repetitive or predetermined, structural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sudden stops and their negative effects on GDP have recently received increased attention because quantitative easing has led to substantial capital inflows into emerging economies. We extend the empirical literature on the impact of sudden stops on GDP by proposing an alternative econometric approach which is multivariate, nonlinear and uses a novel way to identify sudden stops. We estimate a Markov switching vector autoregression with a latent variable indicating whether the economy is in a sudden stop regime. We use the maximum fraction of forecast error variance approach for partial structural identification of the vector autoregression model. Beyond confirming findings from the existing empirical literature on sudden stops, our results additionally show that (i) sudden stops are associated with regime switches (i.e., breaks in the behavior of economic variables), which have significantly negative and permanent effects on GDP; (ii) impulse responses to net capital inflow shocks are regime dependent with economies being more vulnerable to shocks during the sudden stop regime; and (iii) there were different main drivers of the output decline in historical sudden stop episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonlinear modeling of adjustments to purchasing power parity has recently gained much attention. However, a huge body of the empirical literature applies ESTAR models and neglects the existence of other competing nonlinear models. Among these, the Markov Switching AR model has a strong substantiation in international finance. Our contribution to the literature is fivefold: First, ESTAR and MSAR models from a unit root perspective are compared. To this end, a new unit root test against MSAR is proposed as the second contribution. Thirdly, the case of misspecified alternatives in a Monte Carlo setup with real world parameter constellations is studied. The ESTAR unit root test is not indicative, while the MSAR unit test is robust. Fourthly, the case of correctly specified alternatives is considered and low power of the ESTAR but not for the MSAR unit root test is observed. Fifthly, an empirical application to real exchange rates suggests that they may indeed be explained by Markov Switching dynamics rather than ESTAR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on U.S. monetary policy provides no sense of a consensus regarding the existence of a monetary policy regime. This article explores the evolution of U.S. monetary policy regimes via the development of a Markov-switching model predicated on narrative and statistical evidence of a monetary policy regime. We identified five regimes for the period spanning 1956:I-2005:IV and they roughly corresponded to the Chairman term of the Federal Reserve, except for the Greenspan era. More importantly, we demonstrate that the conflicting results regarding the response to inflation for the pre-Volcker period in the existing literature is not attributable to the different data but due to different samples, and also provided an insight regarding the Great Inflation-namely, that the near non-response to inflation in the early 1960s appears to have constituted the initial seed of the Great Inflation. We also find via analysis of the Markov-switching model for the U.S. real interest rate, that the regime changes in the real interest rate follow the regime changes in monetary policy within 2 years and that the evolution of real interest rate regimes provides a good explanation for the conflicting results regarding the dynamics of real interest rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the evolution of the U.S. labor market across the business cycle and specifically the relationship between the unemployment rate and the average duration of unemployment. Labor market recoveries have long been thought of as lagging recoveries in broad economic activity. In particular, the unemployment rate peaks several months after official business cycle troughs and the average duration of unemployment lags further behind. Using estimates from Markov switching models of the unemployment rate, average duration of unemployment, jobless claims, and the exhaustion rate of regular unemployment insurance, this paper dates contractionary and expansionary phases of various aspects of the labor market and their relationship to the official phases of the business cycle. Evidence from these models suggests that inflows into unemployment recover almost contemporaneously with broad economic activity, while outflows recover almost a year after the end of official recessions. The differential timing in the recoveries of unemployment inflows and outflows, which is not a characteristic of most macro models of the labor market, accounts for the observed pattern between the unemployment rate and average duration of unemployment. Finally, when comparing the phases of the labor market to periods where Congress extends unemployment insurance benefits, it appears that policymakers target periods where the job finding rate is low, rather than periods where the stock of unemployed workers is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the properties of several residual-based cointegration tests when long-run parameters are subject to multiple shifts driven by an unobservable Markov process. Unlike earlier study, which considered one-off deterministic breaks, our approach has the advantage of allowing for an unspecified number of stochastic breaks. We illustrate this issue by exploring the possibility of Markov switching cointegration in the stock price-dividend relationship and showing that this case is empirically relevant. Our subsequent Monte Carlo analysis reveals that standard cointegration tests are generally reliable, their performance often being robust for a number of plausible regime shift parameterizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a Markov switching cointegration approach to assess long run fiscal sustainability. This method allows us to simultaneously: (1) test for cointegration in the presence of significant fiscal policy changes; (2) assess the type of fiscal regime that a country experienced at a given period and (3) analyse the timing of the transition between the estimated regime types. Given its flexibility, our approach enable us to uncover a richer and more complex dynamics in the analysis of fiscal sustainability, which standard linear cointegration methods fail to capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]