I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Texas A&M University. I am on a sabbatical at Princeton University for the academic year 2024-2025. I specialize in applied macroeconomics, time series (classical and Bayesian) econometrics, and forecasting.
My current research focuses on identifying monetary policy shocks, monetary policy communication, uncertainty, and their macroeconomic implications. I also work on model selection and evaluation tools in the context of time variation. I have a particular interest in predictive density evaluations.
I am a member of the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics executive committee as a former president, a Board Member of the Armenian Economic Association, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
I recently taught ECMT 475, Economic Forecasting for undergraduates, ECMT 674, Economic Forecasting for Master's, and ECMT 638, Applied Time Series Econometrics.
Below are the pre-publication versions of my manuscripts. My Google Scholar page provides links to published versions of the papers. You can reach me at email addresses tsekhposyan (at) tamu (dot) edu & tatevik (dot) sekhposyan (at) gmail (dot) com.
Office Hours: by appointment
Working Papers
"Rethinking the Stability of Okun’s Law" (with Eiji Goto), March 2025.
"The Relevance of Temporal Aggregation for the Propagation of Macroeconomic Shocks" (with Yeon Jik Lee), October 2024.
"Networking the Yield Curve Surprises: Implications for Monetary Policy" (with Tatjana Dahlhaus and Julia Schaumburg), December 2020.
→ Short presentation; Long presentation
"Understanding the Sources of Macroeconomic Uncertainty" (with Barbara Rossi and Matthieu Soupre), updated in April 2020.
→ Uncertainty Indices in Excel
Academic Publications
"Survey-based Monetary Policy Uncertainty and its Asymmetric Effects" (with Tatjana Dahlhaus), Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, accepted. A previous version is available as a Bank of Canada Working Paper.
→ Short discussions in Central Banking & PERCspectives on Research
→ Monetary Policy Uncertainty Index in Excel"From Fixed-event to Fixed-horizon Density Forecasts: Obtaining Measures of Multi-horizon Uncertainty from Survey Density Forecasts" (with Gergely Ganics and Barbara Rossi), Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 56(7), 2024, 1675-1704. Replication Matlab codes.
"Evaluating Forecast Performance with State Dependence" (with Florens Odendahl and Barbara Rossi), Journal of Econometrics 237 (2, Part C), 2023, 105220.
"Has the Information Channel of Monetary Policy Disappeared? Revisiting the Empirical Evidence" (with Lukas Hoesch and Barbara Rossi), American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 15(3), 2023, 355-387. Online Appendix, Not-For-Publication Appendix. Replication Codes & Other.
→ Short discussion in VoxEU, Brookings Hutchins Roundup & PERCspectives on Research"Markov Switching Rationality" (with Florens Odendahl and Barbara Rossi), Appendix, Advances in Econometrics 45(B), 2023, 35-64.
"Real-Time Forecasting and Scenario Analysis using a Large Mixed Frequency Bayesian VAR" (with Michael McCracken and Michael Owyang), International Journal of Central Banking 18(5), 2021, 327-367. Replication Matlab codes.
"Predicting Relative Forecasting Performance: An Empirical Investigation" (with Eleonora Granziera), International Journal of Forecasting 35(4), 2019, 1636-1657. Appendix.
"Alternative Tests for Correct Specification of Conditional Predictive Densities" (with Barbara Rossi), Journal of Econometrics 208(2), 2019, 638-657. Replication Matlab codes.
→ Simple codes to implement the tests
→ Tests are also available in software packages F.I.T. and BEAR"Macroeconomic Uncertainty Indices for the Euro Area and its Individual Member Countries" (with Barbara Rossi), Empirical Economics 53(1), 2017, 41-62. Replication Matlab codes.
→ Working paper with additional robustness results
→ Macroeconomic Uncertainty Indices in Excel, as reported in the paper
→ Matlab codes for updating the macroeconomic (output growth) uncertainty index as new data becomes available
→ Macroeconomic Uncertainty Index for Euro Area in Excel, last updated in April 2024
"Forecast Rationality Tests in the Presence of Instabilities, With Applications to Federal Reserve and Survey Forecasts" (with Barbara Rossi), Journal of Applied Econometrics 31(3), 2016, 507-532. Appendix. Replication Matlab codes.
→ Tests are also available in software packages F.I.T. and BEAR"Macroeconomic Uncertainty Indices Based on Nowcast and Forecast Error Distributions" (with Barbara Rossi), American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 105(5), 2015, 650-655. Appendix. Replication Matlab codes.
→ Matlab codes for updating the series as new data becomes available
→ Macroeconomic Uncertainty Index in Excel, last updated in February 2024
"Evaluating Predictive Densities of U.S. Output Growth and Inflation in a Large Macroeconomic Data Set" (with Barbara Rossi), International Journal of Forecasting 30(3), 2014, 662-682. Replication Matlab codes. Comment.
→ Winner of the IJF's Outstanding Paper Award
"Conditional Predictive Density Evaluation in the Presence of Instabilities" (with Barbara Rossi), Journal of Econometrics 177(2), 2013, 199-212. Replication Matlab codes.
"Okun’s Law over the Business Cycle: Was the Great Recession All That Different?" (with Michael Owyang), Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, September/October 2012, 94(5), 399-418. Replication Matlab codes.
"The Local Effects of Monetary Policy" (with Neville Francis and Michael Owyang), The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics 12(2) (Advances), 2012. Appendix, Replication Matlab codes.
"Understanding Models' Forecasting Performance" (with Barbara Rossi), Journal of Econometrics 164(1), 2011, 158-172. Replication Matlab codes.
"Have Economic Models' Forecasting Performance for US Output Growth and Inflation Changed Over Time, and When?" (with Barbara Rossi), International Journal of Forecasting 26(4), 2010, 808-835. Appendix. Replication Matlab codes.
Policy and Other Publications
"Bridging Data Science Programming with Advanced Formal Coursework" (with Wesley Brashear, Zhenhua He, Richard Lawrence, Dhruva Chakravorty, Margaret Carpenter, Honggao Liu), Journal of Computational Science 13 (2), 2022.
"Can Electricity Demand Help Us Monitor the Economy?" (with Noah Kouchekinia), Private Enterprise Research Center Policy Studies, July 2022. Replication codes.
→ Some preliminary work for electricity load data for other states"The Fog of Numbers" (with Òscar Jordà, Noah Kouchekinia, and Colton Merrill) FRBSF Economic Letter 2020-20, July 2020.
→ Short discussion in The FRED Blog, The WSJ's Real Time Economics, Econbrowser"Methodology for Constructing an Economic Index for the College Station-Bryan Metropolitan Statistical Area" (with Dennis Jansen, Carlos Navarro, and Andrew Rettenmaier), Private Enterprise Research Center Policy Studies, October 2018.
"Output and Unemployment: How Do They Relate Today?" (with Michael Owyang and E. Katarina Vermann), Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis The Regional Economist, October 2013, 5-9.
→ Short discussion in The WSJ's Real Time Economics, Conversable Economist
Miscellaneous
NPR Marketplace:
→ On the US jobs report
→ On leading economic indicators
→ On structural shifts in the economy
→ On deflation versus disinflation
→ On effects of US GDP on the global economy
The effort to establish an Economics research center in Armenia, interview on Hetq, update on the interview
Interview with H2, an Armenian news channel, about the Armenian Economic Association Meeting, 2024
Exploring the Uncertainty of Predictions, Amazon Science, includes some discussions on Economics as a profession
The 27th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Econometrics Group at Texas A&M University in 2017
Slides for the 2015 Armenian Economic Association Workshop on "Forecasting Techniques and Forecast Evaluation"