A "sunspot" is a variable that has no direct impact on the economy's fundamental condition, such as preferences, endowments or technologies, but may nonetheless affect economic outcomes through the expectations channel as a coordination device. This paper investigates how people react to...

The good forecasting performance of factor models has been well documented in the literature. While many studies focus on a very limited set of variables (typically GDP and inflation), this study evaluates forecasting performance at disaggregated levels to examine the source of the improved...

While the usefulness of factor models has been acknowledged over recent years, little attention has been devoted to the forecasting power of these models for the Japanese economy. In this paper, we aim at assessing the relative performance of factor models over different samples, including the...

We evaluate forecasts for the euro area in data-rich and 'data-lean' environments by comparing three different approaches: a simple PMI model based on Purchasing Managers' Indices (PMIs), a dynamic factor model with euro area data, and a dynamic factor model with data from the euro plus data...

We evaluate different approaches for using monthly indicators to predict Chinese GDP for the current and the next quarter ('nowcasts' and 'forecasts' respectively). We use three types of mixed-frequency models, one based on an economic activity indicator (Liu et al., 2007), one based on...

How does aggregate profit uncertainty influence investment activity at the firm level? We propose a parsimonious adaptation of a factor-autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model to exploit information in a subindustry sales panel for an efficient and tractable estimation of aggregate...

Using the Baker et al. (2013) index of policy uncertainty for six developed countries, this paper estimates spillovers of policy uncertainty. We find that spillovers account for slightly more than one-fourth of the dynamics of policy uncertainty in these countries, with this share rising to...

I study a model of competing data intermediaries (e.g., online platforms and data brokers) that collect personal data from consumers and sell it to downstream firms. Competition in this market has a limited impact in terms of benefits to consumers: If intermediaries offer high compensation for...

A distinguishing feature of macro stress testing exercises is the use of macroeconomic models in scenario design and implementation. It is widely agreed that scenarios should be based on rare but plausibleʺ events that have either resulted in vulnerabilities in the past or could do so in the...

The author constructs a formal analytic framework to simulate the impact of various economic shocks on the household debt-service ratio, using data from the Canadian Financial Monitor (CFM) survey. The impact of these shocks on individual households depends on the socio-economic characteristics...