Professor Gabriel Talmain, MPhil, PhD

Daniel Jack Chair of Political Economy and Director of the Centre for Economic and Financial Studies

g.talmain@lbss.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)141 330 5062
Room S202
Office hour: Thursday 10.00 am – 11.00 am

Teaching 2009-10

Undergraduate: Advanced Macroeconomics 1: Government Debt, Interest and Economic Growth
Postgraduate: Economic Fundamentals and Financial Markets

Research interests

My current work is in the area of Real Business Cycles (RBC). Many aspects of macroeconomics abound with so-called puzzles: relationships that economic theory, and sometimes common sense, dictate, but that are not upheld in empirical studies. The apparent direct implication of these findings is that markets are not efficient, agents are not rational and that investors, including professional and institutional investors, routinely turn down enormous profit opportunities for no discernable reason.

Having recently discovered, in a joint work with Karim Abadir, that a heretofore-unknown process dominates the dynamic behaviour of many macroeconomic variables, I am currently involved in showing that most of these so-called puzzles evaporate once the implication of the dynamics of this new process is properly taken into account. Indeed, our applied work shows that this nonlinear process effectively masks the true nature of the relationship between macroeconomic variables to the current econometric methods.

I am currently interested in:

• developing new methods that deal effectively with the problem of persistence and nonlinear dynamics in macroeconomics;
• investigating the phenomenon that is responsible for generating this nonlinear dynamics;
• analysing the economic policy issues and implications of this dynamic, such as the persistence of monetary policy and of inflation;
• extending the analysis to the financial market (to explain the dynamics of the stock market), labour market (to understand the persistence of unemployment) and other areas of economics.

Background

Gabriel joined the Department in September 2006.  He previously held positions at the Universities of York and the State University of New York at Albany (USA), and visiting positions at the European Central Bank, Nuffield College, the Banco de Portugal, the University of British Columbia (Canada), the New Economic School (Russia), the Universidad Nova de Lisboã (Portugal) and Columbia Business School (USA). He is currently co-editor of the Bulletin of Economic Research. He holds degrees from Université Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris), the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l' Administration Economique (Paris), Université Pantheon-La Sorbonne (Paris), and Columbia University (USA). He was Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of York from 2002-2006. 

Selected publications

Talmain, G. and Abadir, K.M. (2005). 'Autocovariance functions of series and of their transforms', Journal of Econometrics, vol. 124(2), (February), pp. 227-252.

Talmain, G. (2003). 'Growth and business cycles', in (S. Altug, J. Chadha, and C. Nolan, eds.), Elements of Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis, pp. 509-568, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Talmain, G. and Abadir, K.M. (2002). 'Aggregation, persistence and volatility in a macro model', Review of Economic Studies, vol. 69(4), (October), pp. 749-779.

Talmain, G. and Nili, F. (2001). 'Rent-seeking, occupational choice and oil boom', University of York, DERS working paper, 2001/11.

Talmain, G. and Yoon, Y. (2001). 'Endogenous fertility, endogenous growth and public pension system: should we switch from a Pay-As-You-Go to a fully-funded system?', Manchester School, vol. 69(5), (October), pp. 586-605. Abstract.

Talmain, G. and Abadir, K.M. (2001). 'Depreciation rates and capital stocks', Manchester School, vol. 69(1), (January), pp. 42-51. Abstract.

Talmain, G., Trotier, D., Eloit, C., Wassef, M., Bensimon, J.L., Døving, K.B. and Ferrand, J. (2000). 'The vomeronasal cavity in adult humans', Chemical Senses, vol. 25(4), (August), pp. 369-380. Abstract.

Talmain, G. (1999). 'On the number of currencies needed to implement the complete asset market allocation', Journal of Mathematical Economics, vol. 31(2), (March), pp. 251-263. Abstract.

Talmain, G. (1998). 'An analytical approximate solution to the problem of precautionary savings', Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, vol. 23(1), (September), pp. 113-124. Abstract.

Talmain, G., Chou, C. and Kimura, F. 'R&D effort, domestic and international scale effects', University of York, DERS, Mimeo. Abstract (R&D effort).

Talmain, G. and Kimura, F. 'International commerce, export networks, and general trading companies', University of York, DERS, Mimeo. Abstract (International commerce).

Talmain, G. and Chou, C. (1996). 'Redistribution and growth: Pareto improvements', Journal of Economic Growth, vol. 1(4), (December), pp. 502-523. Abstract.

Talmain, G. and Chou, C. (1993). 'Nonparametric search', Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, vol. 17(5-6), (September-November), pp. 771-784.

Talmain, G. (1992). 'Search from an unknown distribution: an explicit solution', Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 57(1), (June), pp. 141-157.

Submissions / work in progress

Talmain, G. and Abadir, K.M., 'Distilling co-movements from persistent macro and financial series'.

Talmain, G., 'Stock market valuation and monopolistic competition: a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach'.

Talmain, G., Abadir, K.M. and Caggiano, G., 'Nelson-Plosser revisited: the ACF approach', link to the datafile and matlab routines.

Talmain, G. 'Public debt, income shares, and the slowdown in the growth of the productivity of labour'.

Talmain, G. 'S&P 500 and economic fundamentals: an ACF based modelling approach'.

Talmain, G. 'Long swings in the dollar: how much is contributed by economic conditions and how much by the exchange rate's own dynamics?'.

Talmain, G. 'Pricing to market in a persistent economy and the PPP anomaly'.

Talmain, G. and Moretti, G. 'The strong internal propagation mechanism of the heterogeneous RBC model'.

Link to Full CV (Talmain)