We address some of the key questions that arise in forecasting the price of crude oil. What do applied forecasters need to know about the choice of sample period and about the tradeoffs between alternative oil price series and model specifications? Are real or nominal oil prices predictable...

Notwithstanding a resurgence in research on out-of-sample forecasts of the price of oil in recent years, there is one important approach to forecasting the real price of oil which has not been studied systematically to date. This approach is based on the premise that demand for crude oil derives...

In this study some alternative forecasts for the unemployment rate of USA made by four institutions (International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Blue Chips (BC)) are evaluated regarding the accuracy and...

In this paper article, two strategies based on the econometric approach are proposed in order to improve the forecast accuracy of GDP index in Romania. First, the index is predicted starting from an econometric model that reflects the relationship between the GDP index and the GDP deflator....

Econometric modeling of the exchange rate saw successive progresses, the forecasts based on the ‘70s models having a rather good accuracy, as recent researches showed. In order to explain the monthly evolution of RON/USA exchange rate during 2007-June 2011, I used three econometric models: a...

The aggregation of the variables that compose an indicator, as GDP, which should be forecasted, is not mentioned explicitly in literature as a source of forecasts uncertainty. In this study based on data on U.S. GDP and its components in 1995-2010, we found that GDP one-step-ahead forecasts made...

This article proposes an empirical econometric approach to improve the degree of accuracy for predictions made by Romanian experts in forecasting. Several fixed-effects models are constructed using the inflation and unemployment rate actual values and the forecasts provided by the European...

The answer as to whether there are gains from pooling real-time oil price forecasts depends on the objective. The approach of combining five of the leading forecasting models with equal weights dominates the strategy of selecting one model and using it for all horizons up to two years. Even more...

This paper conducts a real-time, out-of-sample analysis of the forecasting power of various aggregate financial intermediaries’ balance sheets to a wide range of economic activity measures in the United States. I find evidence that the balance sheets of leveraged financial institutions do have...