This paper advances beyond the prediction of the probability of a recession by also considering its severity in terms of output loss and duration. First, Probit models are used to estimate the probability of a recession at period t + h from the information available at period t. Next, a Vector...

This paper tackles the prediction of the probability and severity of US recessions. We employ parsimonious Probit models to estimate the probability of a recession h periods ahead, for h varying between 1 and 8 quarters. A novel goodness-of-fit measure derived from the Kullback-Leibler...

We compare the performance of six classes of models at forecasting di↵erent types of economic series in an extensive pseudo out-of-sample exercise. Our findings can be summarized in a few points: (i) Regularized Data-Rich Model Averaging techniques are hard to beat in general and are the best...

This paper proposes a simple nonlinear framework to produce real-time multi-horizon forecasts of economic activity as well as conditional forecasts that depend on whether the horizon of interest belongs to a recessionary episode or not. Our forecasting models take the form of an autoregression...