About

Richard Startz is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of Washington. He earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served at the university from 1984 to 2011. His research includes topics such as the dynamic relationship between permanent and transitory components of U.S. business cycles and the modeling of congressional partisan regimes. His work has been published in reputable journals, contributing to the fields of macroeconomics and political economy.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Economics
• Finance
• Business
• Macroeconomics
• Virology
• Econometrics
• Monetary economics
• Keynesian economics
• Law
• Geography
• Financial system
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• Recessions, Recoveries, and Leverage

  Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics · 2025-02-24

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT When leverage is low, recoveries from recessions are likely to eventually return the economy to its pre‐recession growth path. When leverage is high, recoveries are likely to leave the economy below its pre‐recession growth path. In other words, low‐leverage recessions are likely to be U‐shaped, whereas high‐leverage recessions are likely to be L‐shaped. The increase in leverage over the postwar period indicates that recent recessions are much more likely to be L‐shaped. In particular, there is strong evidence that the Great Recession in the U.S. was L‐shaped. We also find similar effects of leverage for several other countries, but not all.

  PublisherDOI

• Measuring persistent global economic factors with output, commodity price, and commodity currency data

  Journal of Forecasting · 2024-05-27 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract In this study, we use monthly G7 industrial production data, commodity price index data, and commodity currency exchange rate data in a dynamic factor model to examine the global economic factors useful for commodity price prediction. We differentiate between the dynamic factors by specifying a persistent factor and a non‐persistent factor, both as a single global factor using all data and as factors for each category of data. The in‐sample predictive performances of the three persistent factors together are better than the non‐persistent factors and the single global factors. Out‐of‐sample outcomes based on forecast combinations also support the presence of predictive information in the persistent factors for overall commodity prices and for most sub‐categories of commodity price indexes relative to their means. The gains in forecast accuracy are heterogeneous, ranging from 5% to 7% in the 1‐ to 6‐month horizon for overall commodity prices to a high of around 20% for fertilizers in the 12‐month horizon in the recent sample. We further show that the information in the persistent factors, especially in the commodity currency exchange rate‐based persistent factor, can be integrated with other global measures to further improve the predictive performances of the global measures.

  PublisherDOI

• The variance of regression coefficients when the population is finite

  Journal of Econometrics · 2024-02-09

  articleOpen access1st author

  Recent work has returned attention to the role of finite-population corrections in empirical settings. It is well established that if the only source of variation arises from the sampling design, then the asymptotic variance of regression estimators must include the proportion of the finite population that is sampled. If there is, in addition, a random shock to each element of the finite population, then it is commonly observed that the resulting super-population renders the finite-population correction moot. We explore this setting and find that this common observation does not fully capture the richness of the result. The fraction of the finite population that is sampled defines bounds on the variance of regression estimators. Ignoring the finite-population correction yields the upper bound, which can be quite conservative.

  PublisherDOI

• Inference and extrapolation in finite populations with special attention to clustering

  Econometric Reviews · 2023-04-21 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Statistical inference in economics is commonly based on formulas assuming infinite populations. We present appropriate formulas for use when sampling from finite populations, with special attention given to issues of treatment effects and to issues of clustering. Issues of whether to apply finite population corrections are often subtle, and appropriate corrections may depend on difficult to observe parameters, leaving the investigator only with bounds on relevant estimator variances.

  PublisherDOI

• Recessions, Recoveries, and Leverage

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Variance of Regression Coefficients When the Population Is Finite

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Covid, colleges, and classes

  Applied Economics · 2022 · 5 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Demographic economics
  • Economics

  At the start of the 2020 school year, some colleges chose to reopen in person while others offered primarily online classes. We find that colleges responded to financial and other incentives largely as one might expect. Larger shares of revenue attributed to in-person activities, such as dorms and dining halls, led schools to reopen in person. In general, the share of revenue due to tuition and fees had little association with reopening in-person, which is consistent with the idea that the effect of the mode of reopening on enrolment was ambiguous. However, private schools experiencing financial distress due to tuition and fees were more likely to reopen in-person while public schools were less likely. Public colleges were influenced by political pressures and the fraction of students from out of state, while private schools responded to the severity of COVID in their local community.

  PublisherDOI

• Covid, Colleges, and Classes

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021 · 3 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Virology
  PublisherDOI

• Monetary shock measurement and stock markets

  Journal of money credit and banking · 2021-11-22 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract The narrative approach‐based measurement of monetary shocks suggests infrequent shocks are crucial for understanding the impact of monetary policy shocks on the economy. However, the narrative approach is dependent on costly data collection process, researcher judgment, and is prone to delays due to official document release. We present a stock market‐based regime switching unobserved components model to estimate the monetary shocks while preserving the key feature of infrequent shocks. Our estimated shocks are large and comparable to Romer and Romer (2004) shocks. The impulse responses to our estimated monetary policy shocks suggest that a 1% contractionary shock leads to 2% long‐term decline in industrial production with a peak effect of 3.5% decline and more than one percent long‐term decline in CPI.

  PublisherDOI

• Macroeconomics, Thirteenth Edition

  2021-10-28

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Rüdiger Dornbusch

  32 shared

• Stanley Fischer

  31 shared

• Ökonomen Im Haupt- Studium Caspers

  25 shared

• Dornbusch

  Pace University

  25 shared

• Herausgegeben Von Universitätsprofessor

  Technical University of Darmstadt

  25 shared

• Globales Marketing-Management

  Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

  25 shared

• Erschienene Bisher

  Pace University

  25 shared

• Trainingsbuch Zu Varían

  Gesellschaft Fur Mathematik Und Datenverarbeitung

  25 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology