Can we use newspaper articles to forecast economic activity? Our answer is yes and, to this end, we propose a brand new economic dictionary in Italian with valence shifters, and we apply it to a corpus of about two million articles from four popular newspapers. We produce a set of high-frequency...

Vector autoregressions with Markov-switching parameters (MS-VARs) fit the data better than do their constant-parameter predecessors. However, Bayesian inference for MS-VARs with existing algorithms remains challenging. For our first contribution, we show that Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC)...

The period of extraordinary volatility in euro area headline inflation starting in 2007 raised the question whether forecast combination methods can be used to hedge against bad forecast performance of single models during such periods and provide more robust forecasts. We investigate this issue...

This paper proposes a methodology to estimate the euro-area output gap by taking advantage of two types of data heterogeneity. On the one hand, the method uses information on real GDP, inflation, and the unemployment rate for each member state; on the other hand, it jointly considers this...

This paper develops a method for decomposing GDP into trend and cycle exploiting the cross-sectional variation of state-level real GDP and unemployment rate data. The model assumes that there are common output and unemployment rate trend and cycle components, and that each state's output and...

Counterparty credit risk (CCR), a key driver of the 2007-08 credit crisis, has become one of the main focuses of the major global and U.S. regulatory standards. Financial institutions invest large amounts of resources employing Monte Carlo simulation to measure and price their counterparty...

The aim of the paper is to estimate a reliable quarterly time-series of potential output for the Italian economy, exploiting four alternative approaches: a Bayesian unobserved component method, a univariate time-varying autoregressive model, a production function approach and a structural VAR....

Does fiscal policy stimulate output? SVARs have been used to address this question but no stylized facts have emerged. We derive analytical relationships between the output elasticities of fiscal variables and fiscal multipliers. We show that standard identification schemes imply different...

The paper develops an early warning system to identify banks that could face liquidity crises. To obtain a robust system for measuring banks’ liquidity vulnerabilities, we compare the predictive performance of three models – logistic LASSO, random forest and Extreme Gradient Boosting – and...

Business investment is a very important variable for short- and medium-term economic analysis, but it is volatile and difficult to predict. Qualitative business survey data are widely used to provide indicators of economic activity ahead of the publication of official data. Traditional...