The Unassuming Economist

From a new paper by Efrem Castelnuovo, Kerem Tuzcuoglu, and Luis Uzeda:

“We propose a new empirical framework to estimate sectoral uncertainty from data-rich environments. We jointly decompose the conditional variance of economic time series into a common, a sector-specific, and an idiosyncratic component. By specifying a hierarchical-factor structure to stochastic volatility modeling, our framework combines both dimension reduction and flexibility. To estimate the model, we develop an efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm based on precision sampling techniques. We apply our framework to a large dataset of disaggregated industrial production series for the U.S. economy. Our findings suggest that: (i) uncertainty is heterogeneous at a sectoral level; and (ii) durable goods uncertainty may drive some business cycle effects typically attributed to aggregate uncertainty.”

From a new paper by Caner Demir and, Raif Cergibozan:

“In this paper, we present the results of a study examining whether the European Union, where countries act in common on many issues such as monetary policy, abolition of borders and mobilization of labour and capital, also constitutes a union in terms of energy security. From this point of view, whether the energy security risk in the European Union has converged or not is tested by using various analysis methods covering the period 1980–2018 for 17 EU countries. The findings of the study not only reveal whether individual countries converge to the group average but also show whether the group as a whole forms a convergent outlook. The linear unit root analysis indicates that each country is in a stochastic convergence process towards the group average. In addition, time series beta convergence analysis, which takes into account country-specific structural break periods, is applied and the convergent-divergent situation of each country before and after the break is revealed. Following this determination of individual countries, whether the sample as a whole constitutes a convergent process is tested with sigma and panel beta convergence models and it is determined that the 17 countries subject to the analysis form a convergent outlook as a whole. A robustness check is also made via a nonlinear time series analysis and the previous findings are confirmed.”

From a paper by Borivoje D. Krušković:

“This paper analyzes the unanalized topic in macroeconomic (monetary) politics, which is the emergence of the currency crisis as a consequence of targeting inflation. Many central banks adopted inflation targeting under a pressure from the IMF. Sudden depreciation of exchange rate which results from a fall of foreign exchange reserves to a critically low level (below an optimal level) leads to currency crisis due speculative attack. The most widely used model in the decision of creating process of monetary policy in inflation targeting regime is the macroeconomic model of a small open economy from the group New Keynesian model.”

From a paper by Julien Pascal:

“This paper reviews the literature examining the consequences of heterogeneity in macroeconomic modeling, especially within the context of monetary and fiscal policy transmission. This review reveals that heterogeneity can significantly alter the transmission mechanisms of monetary policy in macroeconomic models and suggests possible advantages from collaboration between fiscal and monetary policies. The paper also provides a critical evaluation of various analytical (limited-heterogeneity, history truncation, no-trade equilibrium) and numerical methods (forecasting rules, linearization in state-space or sequence-space, global methods) to solve macroeconomic models with heterogeneity, underscoring how these methods relate to each other, while emphasizing the need for a careful methodological choice based on specific circumstances.”

From a paper by Renáta Pitoňáková, Rudolf Kucharčík, and Ladislav Kabát:

“The accession to the European Union, several external shocks, and the questionable state interventions in the country’s business environment significantly impacted economic development of Slovakia. These phenomena were reflected in both the economic and social situation, namely the level of Gross domestic product (GDP) and rate of unemployment. The goal of our paper is to analyze the possible asymmetries in the unemployment-output relationship according to the Okun’s law. We used quarterly data to apply static and dynamic models in their symmetric and asymmetric forms (2009 Q1 – 2023 Q3). The results suggest that the labor market reacts more noticeably to GDP contraction than to GDP expansion. The outcomes are of interest to governing bodies managing labor market policy, primarily in the economic downturn, and for banks in controlling interest rates and inflation.”