The early warning system literature on banking crises has often relied on linear classifiers such as the logit model, which are usually estimated with large datasets of multiple regions of countries. We construct an EWS based on an artificial neural network model with monthly data from the...

Usually, offcial and survey-based statistics guide policy makers in their choice of response instruments to economic crises. However, in an early phase, after a sudden and unforeseen shock has caused incalculable and fast-changing dynamics, data from traditional statistics are only available...

This paper introduces a reinforcement learning based approach to compute optimal interest rate reaction functions in terms of fulfilling inflation and output gap targets. The method is generally flexible enough to incorporate restrictions like the zero lower bound, nonlinear economy structures...

This paper analyses the forecasting performance of monetary policy reaction functions using U.S. Federal Reserve's Greenbook real-time data. The results indicate that artificial neural networks are able to predict the nominal interest rate better than linear and nonlinearTaylor rule models as...

Virtually each seasonal adjustment software includes an ensemble of seasonality tests for assessing whether a given time series is in fact a candidate for seasonal adjustment. However, such tests are certain to produce either the same resultor conflicting results, raising the question if there...

A widespread approach to measuring the innovative capacity of companies, sectors, and regions is the analysis of patents and trademarks or the use of surveys. In emerging digital technologies this approach may, however, not be sufficient for mapping technology diffusion. This applies to...

Independent and high-quality evaluations of government policies are an important input for designing evidence-based policy. Lack of incentives and institutions to write such evaluations, on the other hand, carry the risk of turning the system into a costly beauty contest. We study one of the...

This paper evaluates the quality of survey forecasts, their accuracy and unbiasedness, and their overall consistency. The paper also tries to find out whether the relationships between economic variables are the same in survey data and in the actual data. In other words we analyze whether the...

This paper studies professional forecasts on a micro level using three alternative data sets. The analysis is mainly based on the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasts for the euro area, but for comparison, Consensus Economics survey and the Survey of Professional Forecasts for the US are also...

We apply the boosting estimation method to investigate to what ex-tent and at what horizons macroeconomic time series have nonlinearpredictability coming from their own history. Our results indicate thatthe U.S. macroeconomic time series have more exploitable nonlinearpredictability than...