NBER Working Papers by Refet Gurkaynak

In September 2002, a new market in %u201CEconomic Derivatives%u201D was launched allowing traders to take positions on future values of several macroeconomic data releases. We provide an initial analysis of the prices of these options. We find that market-based measures of expectations are similar to survey-based forecasts although the market-based measures somewhat more accurately predict financial market responses to surprises in data. These markets also provide implied probabilities of the full range of specific outcomes, allowing us to measure uncertainty, assess its driving forces, and compare this measure of uncertainty with the dispersion of point-estimates among individual forecasters (a measure of disagreement). We also assess the accuracy of market-generated probability density f...

Is long-run economic growth exogenous? To address this question, we show that the empirical framework of Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) can be extended to test any growth model that admits a balanced growth path; and we use that framework both to revisit variants of the Solow growth model and to evaluate simple alternative models of endogenous growth. To allow for the possibility that economies in our sample are not on their balanced growth paths, we also study the cross-sectional behavior of TFP growth, which we estimate using alternative measures of labor's share. Our broad conclusion, based on both model estimation and growth accounting, is that long-run growth is significantly correlated with behavioral variables such as the savings rate, and that this correlation is not easily explain...