The “Place Of The Phillips Curve” in Macroeconometric Models: The Case of the First Federal Reserve Board’s Model (1966-1980s)

In the article I examine how model builders from the academia and from the Federal Reserve Board confronted with the Phillips curve in the construction and subsequent modifications of the Federal Reserve, MIT and University of Pennsylvania macroeconometric model. It is argued that academic debates on Friedman’s and Phelps’ accelerationist hypothesis, and the subsequent evolution of the macroeconomics discipline, did not affect the model building agenda at the Research and Statistics Division of the Board over the 1970s and 1980s.

A macroeconometric model for Russia

The paper outlines a structural macroeconometric model for the economy of Russia. The aim of the research is to analyze how the domestic economy functions, generate forecasts for important macroeconomic indicators and evaluate the responses of main endogenous variables to various shocks. The model is estimated based on quarterly data starting from 2001 to 2019. The majority of the equations are specified in error correction form due to the non-stationarity of variables. Stochastic simulation is used to solve the model for expost and ex-ante analysis. We compare forecasts of the model with forecasts generated by the VAR model. The results indicate that the present model outperforms the VAR model in terms of forecasting GDP growth, inflation rate and unemployment rate. We also evaluate the responses of main macroeconomic variables to VAT rate and world trade shocks via stochastic simulation. Finally, we generate ex-ante forecasts for the Russian economy under the baseline assumptions.