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 online activity of Internet users has repeatedly been shown to provide a rich information set for various research fields. We focus on job-related searches on Google and their possible usefulness in the region of the Visegrad Group - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Even for...

In this study we introduce a new indicator for private consumption based on search query time series provided by Google Trends. The indicator is based on factors extracted from consumption-related search categories of the Google Trends application Insights for Search. The forecasting performance...

This report examines whether Google search queries can be used to predict the present and the near future house prices in Finland. Compared to a simple benchmark model, Google searches improve the prediction of the present house price index by 7.5 % measured by mean absolute error. In addition,...

The internet has become the primary source of information for most of the population in modern economies, and as such, it provides an enormous amount of readily available data. Among these are the data on the internet search queries, which have been shown to improve forecasting models for...

In this study we introduce a new monthly indicator for private consumption in Germany based on search query time series provided by Google Trends. The indicator is based on unobserved factors extracted from a set of consumption-related search categories of the Google Trends application Insights...

This study introduces a monthly coincident indicator for consumption in Germany based on Google Trends data on web search activity. In real-time nowcasting experiments the indicator outperforms common survey-based indicators in predicting consumption. Unlike those indicators, it provides...

Information about special events can improve economic forecasts substantially. However, due to the lack of timely quantitative data about these events, it has been difficult for professional forecasters to utilise such information in their forecasts. This paper investigates whether Internet...

I present evidence that the linear mixed-frequency Bayesian VAR provides very sharp and well calibrated monthly real-time recession probabilities for the euro area for the period from 2004 until 2013. The model outperforms not only the univariate regime-switching models for a number of hard and...

Forecasting economic activity during an invasion is a nontrivial exercise. The lack of timely statistical data and the expected nonlinear effect of military action challenge the use of established nowcasting and shortterm forecasting methodologies. In a recent study (Constantinescu (2023b)), I...