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Estimating the Smoothing Parameter in the  
So-Called Hodrick-Prescott Filter
by 
Ekkehart Schlicht 
 
Discussion Paper No. 2004-2, Department of Economics, 
University of Munich 
February 2004 
  
 
Abstract
This note gives a fairly complete statistical description of the 
Hodrick-Prescott Filter (1997) which has been proposed in the context of my 
seasonal adjustment method (Schlicht 1981, 1984). A statistics estimator for the 
smoothing parameter is proposed that is asymptotically equivalent to the 
maximum-likelihood estimator, has a straightforward intuitive interpretation and 
works better in small samples than the maximum-likelihood estimator. The method 
is illustrated by an application and several simulations. 
  
  
  
  
  
Hodrick-Prescott filter; Kalman filtering; Kalman-Bucy; Whittaker-Henderson 
graduation, spline, state-space models; random walk; time-varying coefficients; 
adaptive estimation; time-series; seasonal adjustment; trend 
   
Journal of Economic Literature classification number: C22. 
 
  
    
      Article 
 
 
  
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