We investigate four sources of uncertainty with CPB’s macroeconomic model SAFFIER: provisional data, exogenous variables, model parameters and residuals of behavioural equations. Uncertainty is an inherent attribute of any forecast. We apply a Monte Carlo simulation technique to...

Official forecasts of international institutions are never purely model-based. Preliminary results of models are adjusted with expert opinions. What is the impact of these adjustments for the forecasts? Are they necessary to get 'optimal' forecasts? When model-based forecasts are adjusted by...

Since 1990, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) has used a leading indicator in preparing short-term forecasts for the Dutch economy. This paper describes some recent methodological innovations as well as the current structure and empirical results of the revised CPB...

The movement of the level of house prices in the Netherlands between 1980 and 2007 is explainable fairly well by fundamental supply and demand factors. Empirical research has shown that the overvaluation of approximately 10% that existed in 2003 shrunk to approximately 0% in 2007. This was not...

There are two methods in use to determine the contributions of expenditure categories to economic growth. In the conventional 'international method', total imports are deducted from exports, whereas in what is known as the 'Dutch method', final and intermediary imports are allocated to all...

The composition of economic growth can be analyzed in two different ways. In the 'traditional method' for the decomposition of GDP growth, total imports are deducted from exports. This approach underestimates the importance of exports for the growth in GDP, and overestimates the importance of...

Since late 2004, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis has been using the macro-econometric model SAFFIER for its short-term and medium-term analyses. This model resulted from the integration of the quarterly model SAFE and the yearly model JADE. SAFFIER is a multi-purpose...

We compare the accuracy of our published GDP growth forecasts from our large macro model, SAFFIER, to those produced by VAR based models using both classical and Bayesian estimation techniques. We employ a data driven methodology for selecting variables to include in our VAR models and we find...

The composition of economic growth can be analysed in two different ways. In the 'traditional method' for the decomposition of GDP growth, total imports are deducted from exports. This approach underestimates the importance of exports for the growth in GDP, and overestimates the importance of...