This paper examines the out‐of‐sample forecast performance of sectoral stock market indicators for real GDP, private consumption and investment growth up to 4 quarters ahead in the US and the Euro Area. Our findings are that the predictive content of sectoral stock market indicators: i) is...

Reliable and timely information about current economic conditions is crucial for policy makers and expectations formation. This paper demonstrates the efficacy of the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and the Purchasing Manager Indices (PMI) in anticipating US real economic activity. We...

This paper documents a new stylized fact of the greater macroeconomic stability of the U.S. economy over the last two decades. Using 131 monthly time series, three popular statistical methods and the forecasts of the Federal Reserve's Greenbook and the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we show...

This paper evaluates how well sectoral stock prices forecast future economic activity compared to traditional predictors such as the term spread, dividend yield, exchange rates and money growth. The study is applied to euro area financial asset prices and real economic growth, covering the...

This paper compares the predictive ability of the factor models of Stock and Watson (2002) and Forni, Hallin, Lippi, and Reichlin (2005) using a large panel of US macroeconomic variables. We propose a nesting procedure of comparison that clarifies and partially overturns the results of similar...

We propose a theoretical framework for assessing whether a forecast model estimated over one period can provide good forecasts over a subsequent period. We formalize this idea by defining a forecast breakdown as a situation in which the out-of-sample performance of the model, judged by some loss...

We propose a theoretical framework for assessing whether a forecast model estimated over one period can provide good forecasts over a subsequent period. We formalize this idea by defining a forecast breakdown as a situation in which the out-of-sample performance of the model, judged by some loss...

The issue of forecast aggregation is to determine whether it is better to forecast a series directly or instead construct forecasts of its components and then sum these component forecasts. Notwithstanding some underlying theoretical results, it is generally accepted that forecast aggregation is...