In economics, common factors are often assumed to underlie the co-movements of a set of macroeconomic variables. For this reason, many authors have used estimated factors in the construction of prediction models. In this paper, we begin by surveying the extant literature on diffusion indexes. We...

Diffusion index models have received considerable attention from both theoreticians and empirical econometricians in recent years. One reason for this is that datasets with many variables are increasingly becoming available and being utilized for economic modelling, and another is that common...

Central banks regularly monitor select financial and macroeconomic variables in order to obtain early indication of the impact of monetary policies. This practice is discussed on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York website, for example, where one particular set of macroeconomic indicators is...

We evaluate residual projection strategies in the context of a large-scale macro model of the euro area and smaller benchmark time-series models. The exercises attempt to measure the accuracy of model-based forecasts simulated both out-of-sample and in-sample. Both exercises incorporate...

This paper proposes a simple and model-consistent method for combining forecasts generated by structural micro-founded models and judgmental forecasts. The method also enables the judgmental forecasts to be interpreted through the lens of the model. We illustrate the proposed methodology with a...

Identification based on higher moments has drawn increasing theoretical attention and been widely adopted in empirical practice in macroeconometrics in the last two decades. This article reviews two parallel strands of the literature: identification strategies based on heteroskedasticity and...

We study 30 vintages of FRB/US, the principal macro model used by the Federal Reserve Board staff for forecasting and policy analysis. To do this, we exploit archives of the model code, coefficients, baseline databases and stochastic shock sets stored after each FOMC meeting from the model’s...

In this paper, we propose a novel approach for the ex-ante assessment of tax reforms accounting for second-round effects, i.e. the dynamic scoring of tax reforms. We combine a microsimulation model for selected European countries with VAR estimates of macro responses and, exploiting a unique...

Makroökonometrische Modelle sind in Deutschland aus der kurzfristigen Wirtschaftsprognose und der Prozeßanalyse nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die Entwicklung dahin war zwar auch von Verlangsamungen und Unterbrechungen begleitet - die generelle Disreputation der Makroökonomie in den siebziger...