[lbo-talk] an Austrian hit on real bizcycles

[Jim Westrich]

Last year, when someone asked on this very list about the two people who won the
Nobel Prize, I provided a brief description of the sophisticated (mostly beyond
me) techniques last year's winners (Engle and Granger) developed.  I threw in a
throw away line about Hodrick-Prescott filter being cooler and (voila!) Prescott
wins the next year (maybe the Nobel committee is scouring the LBO archives!).

I actually know nothing about the application of Prescott's work but the
H-P filter for choosing the trend of noisy time-series data I do use.  My only
complaint is that it does not produce a function (each point in time is the
result of a separate minimization) so it could be used in simple forecasting.

Jim

"and now they are all men
complete and fully grown
go buy a piece of linen
and make yourself a shroud
to mourn those hands
to mourn those hands
you'll never know"

     -Sally Timms, "little Tommy Tucker"

Quoting Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>:


> A Nobel Prize for Not Much
>
> by Frank Shostak
>
"