Othman Bouabdallah

The European Way Out of Recession

This paper proposes a two-regime Bounce-Back Function augmented Self-Exciting Threshold AutoRegression (SETAR) which allows for various shapes of recoveries from the recession regime. It relies on the bounce-back effects first analyzed in a Markov-Switching setup by Kim, Morley and Piger [2005] and recently extended by Bec, Bouabdallah and Ferrara [2011a]. This approach is then applied to post-1973 quarterly growth rates of French, German, Italian, Spanish and Euro area real GDPs. Both the linear autoregression and the standard SETAR without bounce-back effect null hypotheses are strongly rejected against the Bounce-Back augmented SETAR alternative in all cases but Italy. The relevance of our proposed model is further assessed by the comparison of its short-term forecasting performances with the ones obtained from a linear autoregression and a standard SETAR. It turns out that the bounce-back models one-step ahead forecasts generally outperform the other ones, and particularly so during the last recovery period in 2009Q3-2010Q4.

Forecasting GDP Over the Business Cycle in a Multi‐Frequency and Data‐Rich Environment

This paper merges two specifications recently developed in the forecasting literature: the MS-MIDAS model (Guerin and Marcellino, 2013) and the factor-MIDAS model (Marcellino and Schumacher, 2010). The MS-factor MIDAS model that we introduce incorporates the information provided by a large data set consisting of mixed frequency variables and captures regime-switching behaviours. Monte Carlo simulations show that this specification tracks the dynamics of the process and predicts the regime switches successfully, both in-sample and out-of-sample. We apply this model to US data from 1959 to 2010 and properly detect recessions by exploiting the link between GDP growth and higher frequency financial variables.

The possible shapes of recoveries in Markov-switching models

This paper explores the various shapes the recoveries may exhibit within a Markov- Switching model. It relies on the bounce-back effects first analyzed by Kim, Morley and Piger (2005) and extends the methodology by proposing i) a more flexible bounce-back model, ii) explicit tests to select the appropriate bounce-back function, if any, and iii) a suitable measure of the permanent impact of recessions. This approach is then applied to post-WWII quarterly growth rates of US, UK and French real GDPs.