This paper presents a weekly GDP indicator for Switzerland, which addresses the limitations of existing economic activity indicators using alternative high-frequency data created in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The indicator is obtained from a Bayesian mixed-frequency dynamic factor model...

This document analyzes inflation, exchange rate, interest rate, and GDP growth forecasts from the monthly Survey of Specialists in Economics from the Private Sector, maintained by Banco de M´exico. The study concentrates on the mean across forecasters for the period from January 1995 to April...

The forecasting literature has identi ed two important issues: (i) several predictors have substantial and statistically signi cant predictive content, although only sporadically, and it is unclear whether this predictive content can be exploited reliably; (ii) in-sample predictive content does...

We suggest the use of an Internet job-search indicator (the Google Index, GI) as the best leading indicator to predict the US unemployment rate. We perform a deep out-of-sample forecasting comparison analyzing many models that adopt both our preferred leading indicator (GI), the more standard...

The procedure for estimating probabilities of future investment returns using time-shifted indexes is based on the simple principle that a multi-dimensional conditional probability distribution can be envisioned involving investment total returns (for a single investment or a fixed portfolio of...

In this paper we introduce a “power booster factor” for out-of-sample tests of predictability. The relevant econometric environment is one in which the econometrician wants to compare the population Mean Squared Prediction Errors (MSPE) of two models: one big nesting model, and another...

We propose a useful way to predict building permits in the US, exploiting rich real-time data from web search queries. The time series on building permits is usually considered as a leading indicator of economic activity in the construction sector. Nevertheless, new data on building permits are...

Analyzing the performance of the economy in real time is a challenge for those who must forecast macroeconomic variables such as inflation or employment. A key aspect of this challenge is evaluating the incoming flow of information contained in economic announcements. In this article, the...

The difficulty in modelling inflation and the significance in discovering the underlying data generating process of inflation is expressed in an ample literature regarding inflation forecasting. In this paper we evaluate nonlinear machine learning and econometric methodologies in forecasting the...

We propose a new approach to mixed-frequency regressions in a high-dimensional environment that resorts to Group Lasso penalization and Bayesian techniques for estimation and inference. To improve the sparse recovery ability of the model, we also consider a Group Lasso with a spike-and-slab...