The equity premium follows a pronounced v-shape pattern around the beginning of recessions. It sharply drops into negative territory just before business cycle peaks and then strongly recovers as the recession unfolds. Recessions are preceded by an inverted yield curve. Thus probit models using...

Infra-monthly time series have increasingly appeared on the radar of official statistics in recent years, mostly as a consequence of a general digital transformation process and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Many of those series are seasonal and thus in need for seasonal...

Infra-monthly economic time series have become increasingly popular in official statistics in recent years. This evolution has been largely fostered by official statistics’ digital transformation during the last decade. The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020 has added fuel to the fire as many...

The interest rate assumptions for macroeconomic forecasts differ considerably among central banks. Common approaches are given by the assumption of constant interest rates, interest rates expected by market participants, or the central bank’s own interest rate expectations. From a theoretical...

For the timely detection of business-cycle turning points we suggest to use mediumsized linear systems (subset VARs with automated zero restrictions) to forecast the relevant underlying variables, and to derive the probability of the turning point from the forecast density as the probability...

We explore whether modelling parameter time variation improves the point, interval and density forecasts of nine major exchange rates vis-a-vis the US dollar over the period 1976-2015. We find that modelling parameter time variation is needed for an accurate calibration of forecast confidence...

In recent years, survey-based measures of expectations and disagreement have received increasing attention in economic research. Many forecast surveys ask their participants for fixed-event forecasts. Since fixed-event forecasts have seasonal properties, researchers often use an ad-hoc approach...

This paper compares two single-equation approaches from the recent nowcast literature: Mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) regressions and bridge equations. Both approach are used to nowcast a low-frequency variable such as quarterly GDP growth by higher-frequency business cycle indicators. Three...

Recently, several institutions have increased their forecast horizons, and many institutions rely on their past forecast errors to estimate measures of forecast uncertainty. This work addresses the question how the latter estimation can be accomplished if there are only very few errors available...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to enormous data movements that strongly affect parameters and forecasts from standard VARs. To address these issues, we propose VAR models with outlier-augmented stochastic volatility (SV) that combine transitory and persistent changes in volatility. The resulting...