The identification of fiscal and monetary policy in a structural VAR

Good economic management depends on understanding shocks from monetary policy, fiscal policy and other sources affecting the economy and their subsequent interactions. This paper presents a new methodology to disentangle such shocks in a structural VAR framework. The method combines identification via sign restrictions, cointegration and traditional exclusion restrictions within a system which explicitly models stationary and non-stationary variables and accounts for both permanent and temporary shocks. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated on a small open economy where policy makers are actively considering the interaction between monetary and fiscal policies.     

Potential Growth and Inflation: Estimates for Australia, the United States and Canada

Estimates of potential output growth for Australia, the United States and Canada are presented and analysed in this article. We define potential growth as that growth rate consistent with a steady (domestic component of the) inflation rate (SIRG). At around 4 per cent per annum, Australia's SIRG has been relatively stable for the past 30 years, which seems inconsistent with the view that wide‐ranging microeconomic reform in the 1990s raised growth potential. However, we show that the reduction in employment growth in Australia from the 1980s to the 1990s may account for the absence of a rise in potential growth. In Canada and the United States the SIRGs are closer to 3 per cent, and we explore the reasons why potential growth estimates are higher for Australia than for North America. We also discuss why Australia's growth averaged less than its potential in the 1980s and 1990s and the possible use of our estimates for monetary policy purposes.     

Systematic and Liquidity Risk in Subprime-Mortgage Backed Securities

The misevaluation of risk in securitized financial products is central to understanding the Financial Crisis of 2007–2008. This paper characterizes the evolution of factors affecting collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) based on subprime mortgages. A key feature of subprime-mortgage backed indices is that they are distinct in their vintage of issuance. Using a latent factor framework that incorporates this vintage effect, we show the increasing importance of a common factor on more senior tranches during the crisis. We examine this common factor and its relationship with spreads. We estimate the effects of the financial crisis on the common factor.     

Modeling trade duration in U.S. Treasury markets

This paper models the trading intensity of the US Treasury bond market, which has a unique expandable limit order book that distinguishes it from other asset markets. The results indicate that trade duration exhibits significant clustering and that the time taken to expand the tradable volume, known as ‘workup’, significantly decreases the time between the initiation of consecutive trades. Finally, we find that trade duration falls in the presence of scheduled news releases, but the size of the surprise in that news release is not found to be important.     

Forecasting output gaps in the G-7 countries: the role of correlated innovations and structural breaks

Trend GDP and output gaps play an important role in fiscal and monetary policy formulation, often including the need for forecasts. In this article, we focus on forecasting trend GDP and output gaps with Beveridge-Nelson trend-cycle decompositions trend-cycle decompositions and investigate how these are affected by assumptions concerning correlated innovations and structural breaks. We evaluate expanding window, one-step-ahead forecasts indirectly for the G-7 countries on the basis of real GDP growth rate forecasts. We find that correlated innovations affect real GDP growth rate forecasts positively, while allowing for structural breaks works for some countries but not for all. In the face of uncertainty, the evidence supports that in making forecasts of trends and output gap policy-makers should focus on allowing for the correlation of shocks as an order of priority higher than unknown structural breaks.     

Flight-to-quality and asymmetric volatility responses in US Treasuries

Flight-to-quality during times of financial crisis is a feature of financial markets. Here, a simple strategic model demonstrates that some preference asymmetry is sufficient to generate endogenous flight-to-quality from an emerging stock market to US Treasury bonds. The empirical evidence from a TARCH model supports the significance of emerging equity market shocks in accounting for the asymmetric properties of US Treasuries across the maturity structure. This effect is found to be more pronounced since the turn of the 21st century.