We suggest the use of an Internet job-search indicator (the Google Index, GI) as the best leading indicator to predict the US unemployment rate. We perform a deep out-of-sample forecasting comparison analyzing many models that adopt both our preferred leading indicator (GI), the more standard...

The empirical literature is very far from any consensus about the appropriate model for oil price forecasting that should be implemented. Relative to the previous literature, this paper is novel in several respects. First of all, we test and systematically evaluate the ability of several...

This paper examines the relationship between biofuels and commodity food prices in the U.S. from a new perspective. While a large body of literature has tried to explain the linkages between sample means and volatilities associated with ethanol and agricultural price returns, little is known...

The purpose of the paper is to introduce the framework for decomposing the forecast of headline inflation, obtained by macroeconomic model of NBRM for monetary policy analysis and medium term projections (MAKPAM), into its components: food, energy and core inflation. The model for inflation...

We develop distress prediction models for non-financial small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) using a dataset from eight European countries over the period 2000-2009. We examine idiosyncratic and systematic covariates and find that macro conditions and bankruptcy codes add predictive power...

This paper presents a forecasting exercise that assesses the predictive potential of a daily price index based on online prices. Prices are compiled using web scrapping services provided by the private company PriceStats in cooperation with a finance research corporation, State Street Global...

Forecasting the inflation path is an important task for central banks in an inflation targeting regime. Therefore, central banks must continuously evaluate the forecasting accuracy of the models used to generate inflation forecasts. This paper evaluates the performance of most of the models that...

In this note we provide simulation evidence on the size and power of tests of predictive ability described in Giacomini and White (2006). Our goals are modest but non-trivial. First, we establish that there exist data generating processes that satisfy the null hypotheses of equal finite-sample...

The primary goal of this paper is to describe several models that are currently used at the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia (NBRM) for short-term forecasting of inflation - Autoregressive integrated moving average models (aggregated and disaggregated approach), three equation...

When constructing unconditional point forecasts, both direct- and iterated-multistep (DMS and IMS) approaches are common. However, in the context of producing conditional forecasts, IMS approaches based on vector autoregressions (VAR) are far more common than simpler DMS models. This is despite...