The development of employment and unemployment in regional labour markets is known to spatially interdependent. Global Vector-Autoregressive (GVAR) models generate a link between the local and the surrounding labour markets and thus might be useful when analysing and forecasting employment and...

This study contributes to research on the nonparametric evaluation of German trade forecasts. To this end, I compute random classification and regression forests to analyze the optimality of annual German export and import growth forecasts from 1970 to 2017. A forecast is considered as optimal...

Different studies provide a surprisingly large variety of controversial conclusions about the forecasting power of an indicator, even when it is supposed to forecast the same time series. In this study, we aim to provide a thorough overview of linear forecasting techniques and draw conclusions...

This paper discusses methods to quantify risk and uncertainty in macroeconomic forecasts. Both, parametric and non-parametric procedures are developed. The former are based on a class of asymmetrically weighted normal distributions whereas the latter employ asymmetric bootstrap simulations. Both...

In this study, we analyzed the forecasting and nowcasting performance of a generalized regression neural network (GRNN). We provide evidence from Monte Carlo simulations for the relative forecast performance of GRNN depending on the data-generating process. We show that GRNN outperforms an...

We use quantile random forests (QRF) to study the efficiency of the growth forecasts published by three leading German economic research institutes for the sample period from 1970 to 2017. To this end, we use a large array of predictors, including topics extracted by means of...

I evaluate German export growth and import growth forecasts published by eight professional forecasters for the years 1971 to 2019. The focus of the evaluation is on the weak and strong efficiency as well as the unbiasedness of the forecasts. To this end, I use a novel panel-data set and...

Economic forecasts are an important element of rational economic policy both on the federal and on the local or regional level. Solid budgetary plans for government expenditures and revenues rely on efficient macroeconomic projections. However, official data on quarterly regional GDP in Germany...

We study the efficiency of growth and inflation forecasts published by three leading German economic research institutes during a period of time ranging from 1970 to 2017. To this end, we examine whether the information used by the research institutes when they formed their forecasts helps to...

Based on German business cycle forecast reports covering 10 German institutions for the period 1993-2017, the paper analyses the information content of German forecasters' narratives for German business cycle forecasts. The paper applies textual analysis to convert qualitative text data into...