IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2364.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Interpretation of Near Random-Walk Behavior in GNP

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth D. West

Abstract

It is shown that GNP will have an autoregressive root very close to unity in a variant of Taylor's (1980a,b) overlapping wage contracts model, for stylized versions of simple money supply rules and plausible values for the model's parameters. In this variant, monetary policy is the only reason for serial correlation in GNP. It is premature, therefore, to conclude, as some authors, have, that the presence of such a root in U.S. GNP is inconsistent with either a stationary natural rate or with nominal shocks playing a major role in the business cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth D. West, 1987. "On the Interpretation of Near Random-Walk Behavior in GNP," NBER Working Papers 2364, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2364
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2364.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    2. De Long, James Bradford & Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "Is Increased Price Flexibility Stabilizing?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 1031-1044, December.
    3. McCallum, Bennett T, 1986. "On "Real' and "Sticky-Price' Theories of the Business Cycle," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 18(4), pages 397-414, November.
    4. John Y. Campbell & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1987. "Are Output Fluctuations Transitory?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(4), pages 857-880.
    5. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1991. "Stochastic Trends and Economic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 819-840, September.
    6. McCallum, Bennett T., 1986. "Some issues concerning interest rate pegging, price level determinacy, and the real bills doctrine," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 135-160, January.
    7. Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-75, July.
    8. Peter K. Clark, 1987. "The Cyclical Component of U. S. Economic Activity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(4), pages 797-814.
    9. Stulz, Rene M. & Wasserfallen, Walter, 1985. "Macroeconomic time-series, business cycles and macroeconomic policies," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 9-53, January.
    10. repec:nbr:nberre:0126 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. 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.
    12. Danny Quah, 1987. "What Do We Learn from Unit Roots in Macroeconomic Time Series?," Working papers 469, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    13. Taylor, John B, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 1-23, February.
    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. Benjamin M. Friedman, 1977. "The Inefficiency of Short-Run Monetary Targets for Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 8(2), pages 293-346.
    16. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    17. Mankiw, N. Gregory, 1987. "The optimal collection of seigniorage : Theory and evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 327-341, September.
    18. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Does GNP have a unit root?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 22(2-3), pages 147-151.
    19. Fama, Eugene F. & Gibbons, Michael R., 1982. "Inflation, real returns and capital investment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 297-323.
    20. Walsh, Carl E, 1986. "In Defense of Base Drift," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 692-700, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin, 1990. "Unit roots in real GNP: Do we know, and do we care?," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 7-61, January.
    2. John Y. Campbell & Pierre Perron, 1991. "Pitfalls and Opportunities: What Macroeconomists Should Know about Unit Roots," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 141-220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Shively, Philip A., 2004. "The size and dynamic effect of aggregate-demand and aggregate-supply disturbances in expansionary and contractionary regimes," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 83-99, March.
    4. Philip A. Shively, 2001. "Trend-stationary GNP: evidence from a new exact pointwise most powerful invariant unit root test," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(4), pages 537-551.
    5. Ángel Guillén & Gabriel Rodríguez, 2014. "Trend-cycle decomposition for Peruvian GDP: application of an alternative method," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 23(1), pages 1-44, December.
    6. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    7. Cribari-Neto, Francisco, 1996. "On time series econometrics," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(Supplemen), pages 37-60.
    8. John Keating, 2004. "Interpreting Permanent and Transitory Shocks to Output When Aggregate Demand May Not Be Neutral in the Long-run," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 608, Econometric Society.
    9. John H. Cochrane, 1990. "Univariate vs. Multivariate Forecasts of GNP Growth and Stock Returns: Evidence and Implications for the Persistence of Shocks, Detrending Methods," NBER Working Papers 3427, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Quah, Danny, 1992. "The Relative Importance of Permanent and Transitory Components: Identification and Some Theoretical Bounds," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(1), pages 107-118, January.
    11. Moolman, Elna, 2004. "A Markov switching regime model of the South African business cycle," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 631-646, July.
    12. Dezhbakhsh, Hashem & Levy, Daniel, 2022. "Interpolation and shock persistence of prewar U.S. macroeconomic time series: A reconsideration," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 213.
    13. Spencer D. Krane, 2006. "How professional forecasters view shocks to GDP," Working Paper Series WP-06-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    14. Dufourt, Frederic, 2005. "Demand and productivity components of business cycles: Estimates and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(6), pages 1089-1105, September.
    15. Joseph G. Haubrich & Andrew W. Lo, "undated". "The Sources and Nature of Long-Term Memory in the Business Cycle," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 05-89, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    16. Perron, Pierre, 1992. "Racines unitaires en macroéconomie : le cas d’une variable," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 68(1), pages 325-356, mars et j.
    17. Gil-Alana, L. A. & Robinson, P. M., 1997. "Testing of unit root and other nonstationary hypotheses in macroeconomic time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 241-268, October.
    18. F. Goerlich, 1991. "Persistencia en las fluctuaciones económicas: evidencia para el caso español," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 15(1), pages 193-202, January.
    19. Spencer D. Krane, 2011. "Professional Forecasters' View of Permanent and Transitory Shocks to GDP," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 184-211, January.
    20. Camacho Maximo & Perez Quiros Gabriel, 2007. "Jump-and-Rest Effect of U.S. Business Cycles," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(4), pages 1-39, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2364. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.