Estimating changes in trend growth of total factor productivity: Kalman and H-P filters versus a Markov-switching framework

Mark W. French

No 2001-44, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: Trend growth in total factor productivity (TFP) is unobserved; it is frequently assumed to evolve continuously over time. That assumption is inherent in the use of the Hodrick-Prescott or Bandpass filter to extract trend. Similarly, the Kalman filter/ unobserved-components approach assumes that changes in the trend growth rate are normally distributed. In fact, however, innovations to the trend growth rate of total factor productivity are far from normal. The distribution is fat-tailed, with large outliers in 1973. Allowing for these outliers, the estimated trend growth rate changes only infrequently. A nonlinear filtering approach is probably better suited to capturing the infrequent past and possible current shifts in trend growth of TFP. One such approach is the Markov-switching model, which is estimated and tested in this paper. The Markov- switching approach appears to have several advantages over repeated Andrews tests.

Keywords: Productivity; Econometric models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ets and nep-pke
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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