Different studies provide a surprisingly large variety of controversial conclusions about the forecasting power of an indicator, even when it is supposed to forecast the same time series. In this study, we aim to provide a thorough overview of linear forecasting techniques and draw conclusions...

This paper evaluates the forecast performance of boosting in comparison to the forecast combination schemes and dynamic factor models presented in Stock and Watson (2006). We find that boosting is a serious competitor for forecasting US industrial production.

In economics the Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) network has become an essential source for the gathering and the spread of both existing and new economic research. Furthermore, it is currently the largest bibliometric database in economic sciences containing 33 different indicators for...

We introduce archetypal analysis as a tool to describe and categorize scientists. This approach identifies typical characteristics of extreme (‘archetypal’) values in a multivariate data set. These positive or negative contextual attributes can be allocated to each scientist under...

In this paper, we ask whether it is possible to forecast gross value-added (GVA) and its sectoral sub-components at the regional level. With an autoregressive distributed lag model we forecast total and sectoral GVA for one German state (Saxony) with more than 300 indicators from different...

We apply the test of Ijiri and Simon (1974) to a large data set of authors in economics. This test has been used by Tol (2009, 2013a) to identify a (within-author) Matthew effect for authors based on citations. We show that the test is quite sensitive to its underlying assumptions and identifies...

It is well-known that the distribution of citations to articles in a journal is skewed. We ask whether journal rankings based on the impact factor are robust with respect to this fact. We exclude the most cited paper, the top 5 and 10 cited papers for 100 economics journals and recalculate the...

This Handbook aims to provide an overview of regular survey activities, as well as to show how survey results can be used scientifically in the context of business-cycle analysis and forecasting.