The paper introduces “system priors”, their use in Bayesian analysis of econometric time series, and provides a simple and illustrative application. System priors were devised by Andrle and Benes (2013) as a tool to incorporate prior knowledge into an economic model. Unlike priors about individual parameters, system priors offer a simple and efficient way of formulating well-defined and economically-meaningful priors about high-level model properties. The generality of system priors are illustrated using an AR(2) process with a prior that most of its dynamics comes from business-cycle frequencies.

There is a small and growing literature that explores the impact of digitization in a variety of contexts, but its economic consequences, surprisingly, remain poorly understood. This volume aims to set the agenda for research in the economics of digitization, with each chapter identifying a promising area of research. "Economics of Digitization "identifies urgent topics with research already underway that warrant further exploration from economists. In addition to the growing importance of digitization itself, digital technologies have some features that suggest that many well-studied economic models may not apply and, indeed, so many aspects of the digital economy throw normal economics in a loop. "Economics of Digitization" will be one of the first to focus on the economic implications of digitization and to bring together leading scholars in the economics of digitization to explore emerging research.

Bayesian Multivariate Time Series Methods for Empirical Macroeconomics provides a survey of the Bayesian methods used in modern empirical macroeconomics. These models have been developed to address the fact that most questions of interest to empirical macroeconomists involve several variables and must be addressed using multivariate time series methods. Many different multivariate time series models have been used in macroeconomics, but Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models have been among the most popular. Bayesian Multivariate Time Series Methods for Empirical Macroeconomics reviews and extends the Bayesian literature on VARs, TVP-VARs and TVP-FAVARs with a focus on the practitioner. The authors go beyond simply defining each model, but specify how to use them in practice, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each and offer tips on when and why each model can be used.

Part I. Unit roots and trend breaks -- Part II. Structural change

Bringing together a collection of previously published work, this book provides a discussion of major considerations relating to the construction of econometric models that work well to explain economic phenomena, predict future outcomes and be useful for policy-making. Analytical relations between dynamic econometric structural models and empirical time series MVARMA, VAR, transfer function, and univariate ARIMA models are established with important application for model-checking and model construction. The theory and applications of these procedures to a variety of econometric modeling and forecasting problems as well as Bayesian and non-Bayesian testing, shrinkage estimation and forecasting procedures are also presented and applied. Finally, attention is focused on the effects of disaggregation on forecasting precision and the Marshallian Macroeconomic Model that features demand, supply and entry equations for major sectors of economies is analysed and described. This volume will prove invaluable to professionals, academics and students alike.

The book describes and illustrates many advances that have taken place in a number of areas in theoretical and applied econometrics over the past four decades.

Eric Ghysels and Denise R. Osborn provide a thorough and timely review of the recent developments in the econometric analysis of seasonal economic time series, summarizing a decade of theoretical advances in the area. The authors discuss the asymptotic distribution theory for linear nonstationary seasonal stochastic processes. They also cover the latest contributions to the theory and practice of seasonal adjustment, together with its implications for estimation and hypothesis testing. Moreover, a comprehensive analysis of periodic models is provided, including stationary and nonstationary cases. The book concludes with a discussion of some nonlinear seasonal and periodic models. The treatment is designed for an audience of researchers and advanced graduate students.