While the yield spread has long been recognized as a good predictor of recessions, it seems to have been largely overlooked by professional forecasters. We examine this puzzle, established by Rudebusch and Williams (2009), in a data-rich environment including not just the yield spread but many...

While the yield spread has long been recognized as a good predictor of recessions, it seems to have been largely overlooked by professional forecasters. We examine this puzzle, established by Rudebusch and Williams (2009), in a data-rich environment including not just the yield spread but many...

We study the role of the well-known monthly diffusion indices produced by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) in nowcasting current quarter U.S. GDP growth. In contrast to the existing literature on ISM surveys, we investigate their marginal impact on these nowcasts when large unbalanced...