The use of large datasets for macroeconomic forecasting has received a great deal of interest recently. Boosting is one possible method of using high-dimensional data for this purpose. It is a stage-wise additive modelling procedure, which, in a linear specification, becomes a variable selection...

Forecast models with large cross-sections are often subject to overparameterization leading to unstable parameter estimates and hence inaccurate forecasts. Recent articles suggest that a large Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) with sufficient prior information dominates competing approaches....

The Ifo Business Climate is one of the best-known German business cycle indicators. Studies on German business cycle indicators have ranked the Ifo Business Climate and its components in the top group of the indicators, together with incoming orders, money supply and interest rates. There is...