Abstract The economic policy forum deals with the question of whether economic policies need economic forecasts. Principally, all three authors agree on their usefulness. However, while Ernst Helmstädter argues that such forecasts can improve the decisions of economic policy-makers, he...

Abstract It is often argued that the globalisation of the world economy might have contributed to an increased instability of real economic activity, in particular for small open economies. At the same time, there is evidence that the volatility of real economic activity might in fact have been...