This paper presents a Bayesian methodology for estimating probability of a downturn in the economy and applies it to the 2007-2008 state of the U.S. economy with the focus on investigating the occurrence of a recession. In the methodological development, information theory (Kullback and Shannon)...

We describe the evolution of forecasts in the run-up to recessions. The GDP forecasts cover 63 countries for the years 1992 to 2014. The main finding is that, while forecasters are generally aware that recession years will be different from other years, they miss the magnitude of the recession...

This paper proposes the use of forecast combination to improve predictive accuracy in forecasting the U.S. business cycle index as published by the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the NBER. It focuses on one-step ahead out-of-sample monthly forecast utilising the well-established coincident...

Accommodative monetary policy during the financial crisis was instrumental in preventing a deeper recession. Views differ, however, on how long such measures should be kept in place. At the heart of this debate is the notion that a protracted period of policy accommodation could create...

In this paper we present and analyze the IMF’s labor market recommendations for advanced economies since the beginning of the crisis, both in general and specifically in program countries. Our analysis is informed by our reading of the theoretical and empirical literature on the design of...

In this paper we present and analyze the IMF‘s labor market recommendations for advanced economies since the beginning of the crisis, both in general and specifically in program countries. Our analysis is informed by our reading of the theoretical and empirical literature on the design of...

Somebody must step up. Somebody must call out the stabilization irrelevance of the American Economic Association's signature macro journal, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. The on-going failure of the nine-year-old journal is most egregiously illustrated by its treatment of the Great...

This paper uses several macroeconomic and financial indicators within a Markov Switching (MS) framework to predict the turning points of the business cycle. The presented model is applied to monthly German real-time data covering the recession and the recovery after the financial crisis. We show...