This paper investigates the predictive accuracy of two alternative forecasting strategies, namely the forecast and information combinations. Theoretically, there should be no role for forecast combinations in a world where information sets can be instantaneously and costlessly combined. However,...

The 2008 financial crisis has rekindled interest in the issue of early warning signals (EWS) of financial distress. It has also triggered renewed interest in the literature on currency crises, with many countries, especially among emerging market economies, experiencing severe exchange market...

This paper introduces the new Monthly Index of Business Activity (MIBA) model of the Banque de France for forecasting France's GDP. As the previous versions, the model relies exclusively on data from the monthly business survey (EMC) conducted by the Banque de France. However, several major...

The paper develops a model for forecasting inflation in France. As this model has to be integrated in the Eurosystem projection exercises, the projections are conditional to specific assumptions and must be consistent with the Macroeconomic projection exercise of the Banque de France. The...

With the European economic integration, the understanding of inflation and inflationary pressures requires to analyse both the national level and the whole Euro area level. This is true in particular for the inflation forecasts that are carried out within the Eurosystem and published four times...

This paper compares the GDP forecasting performance of alternative factor models based on monthly time series for the French economy. These models are based on static and dynamic principal components. The dynamic principal components are obtained using time and frequency domain methods. The...

This paper presents a revised version of the model OPTIM, proposed by Irac and Sédillot (2002), used at the Banque de France in order to predict French GDP quarterly growth rate, for the current and next quarters. The model is designed to be used on a monthly basis by integrating monthly...

Governments and central banks need to have an accurate and timely assessment of Gross Domestic Product's (GDP) growth rate for the current quarter, as this is essential for providing a reliable and early analysis of the current economic situation. This paper presents a series of models conceived...

In this paper we argue that banks anticipate short-term market rates when setting interest rates on loans and deposits. In order to include anticipated rates in an empirical model, we use two methods to forecast market rates - a level, slope, curvature model and a principal components model -...

Standard practice for the estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models maintains the assumption that economic variables are properly measured by a single indicator, and that all relevant information for the estimation is summarized by a small number of data series. However,...