We describe the evolution of forecasts in the run-up to recessions. The GDP forecasts cover 63 countries for the years 1992 to 2014. The main finding is that, while forecasters are generally aware that recession years will be different from other years, they miss the magnitude of the recession...

Keller (1998) reexamines Coe and Helpman`s (1995) analysis of international R&D spillovers focusing on the weights used to define the foreign R&D capital stock. Keller creates random weights and shows that they give rise to positive estimates of international R&D spillovers, casting doubts on...

We leverage insights from machine learning to optimize the trade off between bias and variance when estimating economic models using pooled datasets. Specifically, we develop a simple algorithm that estimates the similarity of economic structures across countries and selects the optimal pool of...

The analysis of interconnectedness and contagion is an important part of the financial stability and risk assessment of a country's financial system. This paper offers detailed and practical guidance on how to conduct a comprehensive analysis of interconnectedness and contagion for a country's...

We examine the extent to which declining manufacturing employment may havecontributed to increasing inequality in advanced economies. This contribution is typicallysmall, except in the United States. We explore two possible explanations: the high initialmanufacturing wage premium and the high...

Extending previous work on the determinants of IMF lending in an interconnected world, we introduce a model of sample selection in which both selection and size dimensions of individual IMF arrangements are presented within a unified econometric framework. We allow for unobserved heterogeneity...

This study investigates the impact of the current financial crisis on Canada's potential GDP growth. Using a simple accounting framework to decompose trend GDP growth into changes in capital, labor services and total factor productivity, we find a sizeable drop in Canadian potential growth in...

Italy's labor productivity in market services has declined since 2000, underperforming manufacturing and peer European countries, especially in strongly regulated sectors. A model of monopolistic competition is used to identify which service sectors would benefit more from removing entry and/or...

This paper studies whether FDI firms employ more workers than domestic firms for each dollar of assets. Using the Orbis database and its ownership structure information, we show that, in most economies, domestic firms tend to employ more workers per asset than FDI firms. The result remains...

We develop a framework to nowcast (and forecast) economic variables with machine learning techniques. We explain how machine learning methods can address common shortcomings of traditional OLS-based models and use several machine learning models to predict real output growth with lower forecast...