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...

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...

We develop a novel multinomial logistic model to detect and forecast concurrent recessions across multi-countries. The key advantage of our proposed framework is that we can detect recessions across countries using the additional informational content from the cross-country panel feature of the...

By means of a very simple example, this note illustrates the appeal of using Bayesian rather than classical methods to produce inference on hidden states in models of Markovian regime switching. -- Bayesian analysis ; switching regression ; regime changes ; nonlinear filtering

Several authors have shown that there exists a significant relationship between the term structure of interest rates and future changes in the rate of inflation. More recently, this relationship has been strengthened through the introduction of nonlinearities and regime shifts. This paper...

When it comes to assess the sustainability of fiscal policy and public debt in Andean countries, two idiosyncratic facts of fiscal revenues have to be considered. First, fiscal revenues coming from natural resources represent up to 44% of total fiscal revenues, producing a strong correlation...

This paper studies the influence of external financial factors on economic activity in emerging economies (EMEs) motivated by a considerable increase in foreign financing by the corporate sector in EMEs since the early 2000s, mainly in the form of bond issuance. A quarterly external financial...

The headline consumer price index (CPI) is often considered too noisy, narrowly defined, and/or slowly available for policymaking. On the other hand, traditional core inflation measures may reduce volatility but do not address other issues and may even exclude important information. This paper...

This paper describes a dynamic factor model for the Maltese economy. The model mainly serves as a tool to timely provide the Central Bank of Malta with nowcasts as well as short-term forecasts of the growth rate of the real gross domestic product, which in turn are used as an input in the...

The funds allocated by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) aim to trigger a multiplier effect on GDP as they are designed to help the recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic. The GDP increase is in turn expected to drive energy consumption up which will increase CO2 emissions, given...