On the Fit and Forecasting Performance of New Keynesian Models

ECB Working Paper No. 491

FRB of Atlanta Working Paper No. 2004-37

58 Pages Posted: 11 Feb 2005

See all articles by Marco Del Negro

Marco Del Negro

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Frank Schorfheide

University of Pennsylvania - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); University of Pennsylvania - The Penn Institute for Economic Research (PIER)

Frank Smets

European Central Bank (ECB); Ghent University - Department of General Economics

Rafael Wouters

National Bank of Belgium

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Abstract

The paper provides new tools for the evaluation of DSGE models, and applies it to a large-scale New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with price and wage stickiness and capital accumulation. Specifically, we approximate the DSGE model by a vector autoregression (VAR), and then systematically relax the implied cross-equation restrictions. Let Lambda denote the extent to which the restrictions are being relaxed. We document how the in- and out-of-sample fit of the resulting specification (DSGE-VAR) changes as a function of Lambda. Furthermore, we learn about the precise nature of the misspecification by comparing the DSGE model's impulse responses to structural shocks with those of the best-fitting DSGEVAR. We find that the degree of misspecification in large-scale DSGE models is no longer so large to prevent their use in day-to-day policy analysis, yet it is not small enough that it cannot be ignored.

Keywords: Bayesian analysis, DSGE models, model evaluation, vector autoregressions

JEL Classification: C11, C32, C53

Suggested Citation

Del Negro, Marco and Schorfheide, Frank and Smets, Frank and Wouters, Rafael, On the Fit and Forecasting Performance of New Keynesian Models. ECB Working Paper No. 491, FRB of Atlanta Working Paper No. 2004-37, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=665188 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.665188

Marco Del Negro

Federal Reserve Bank of New York ( email )

33 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10045
United States

Frank Schorfheide (Contact Author)

University of Pennsylvania - Department of Economics ( email )

Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science
133 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6297
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.econ.upenn.edu/~schorf

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

University of Pennsylvania - The Penn Institute for Economic Research (PIER) ( email )

Philadelphia, PA
United States

Frank Smets

European Central Bank (ECB) ( email )

Sonnemannstrasse 22
Frankfurt am Main, 60314
Germany

Ghent University - Department of General Economics ( email )

Hoveniersberg 24
Ghent, 9000
Belgium

Rafael Wouters

National Bank of Belgium ( email )

Brussels, B-1000
Belgium
+32 2 221 5441 (Phone)
+32 2 221 3162 (Fax)

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