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The Relative Importance of Permanent and Transitory Components: Identification and Some Theoretical Bounds

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  • Danny Quah

Abstract

Much macroeconometric discussion has recently emphasised the economic significance of the size of the permanent component in GNP. Consequently, a large literature has developed that tries to estimate this magnitude - measured, essentially, as the spectral density of increments in GNP at frequency zero. This paper shows that unless the permanent component is a random walk this attention has been misplaced: in general, that quantity does not identify the magnitude of the permanent component. Further, by developing bounds on reasonable measures of this magnitude, the paper shows that a random walk specification is biased towards establishing the permanent component as important.

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File URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/workingPapers/discussionPapers/fmg_pdfs/dp126.pdf
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Paper provided by Financial Markets Group in its series FMG Discussion Papers with number dp126.

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Date of creation: Oct 1991
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Handle: RePEc:fmg:fmgdps:dp126
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.lse.ac.uk/fmg/

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  1. Matthew D. Shapiro & Mark W. Watson, 1988. "Sources of Business Cycle Fluctuations," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 870, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
  2. Perron, Pierre, 1989. "The Great Crash, the Oil Price Shock, and the Unit Root Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1361-1401, November.
  3. Nelson, Charles R. & Plosser, Charles I., 1982. "Trends and random walks in macroeconmic time series : Some evidence and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 139-162.
  4. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum, 1990. "Unit roots in real GNP: do we know, and do we care?," Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues 90-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
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  7. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Danny Quah, 1988. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbance," Working papers 497, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  8. Quah, Danny, 1990. "Permanent and Transitory Movements in Labor Income: An Explanation for "Excess Smoothness" in Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(3), pages 449-75, June.
  9. Diebold, Francis X. & Rudebusch, Glenn D., 1989. "Long memory and persistence in aggregate output," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 189-209, September.
  10. John Y. Campbell & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1987. "Are Output Fluctuations Transitory?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 102(4), pages 857-880.
  11. Marco Lippi & Lucrezia Reichlin, 1993. "The dynamic effects of aggregate demand and supply disturbances: comment," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/10159, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
  12. Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-75, July.
  13. Clark, Peter K., 1988. "Nearly redundant parameters and measures of persistence in economic time series," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 447-461.
  14. Cochrane, John H, 1988. "How Big Is the Random Walk in GNP?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 893-920, October.
  15. Beveridge, Stephen & Nelson, Charles R., 1981. "A new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the `business cycle'," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 151-174.
  16. Sims, Christopher A, 1980. "Macroeconomics and Reality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(1), pages 1-48, January.
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