This paper investigates dynamic currency hedging benefits, with a further focus on the impact of currency hedging before and during the recent financial crises originated from the subprime and the Euro sovereign bonds. We take the point of view of a Euro-based institutional investor who...

The ability of Google Trends data to forecast the number of new daily cases and deaths of COVID-19 is examined using a dataset of 158 countries. The analysis includes the computations of lag correlations between confirmed cases and Google data, Granger causality tests, and an out-of-sample...

We propose a new measure of the expected variance risk premium that is based on a forecast of the conditional variance from a GARCH-MIDAS model. We find that the new measure has strong predictive ability for future U.S. aggregate stock market returns and rationalize this result by showing that...

Since the 1970s the characteristics of international business cycles have changed and deeper economic integration has modified the features of cross-country comovement. We formally test for correlation shifts in measures of real economic activity and economic/financial integration. In Europe we...

Assessing the magnitude of the output gap is critical to achieving an optimal policy mix. Unfortunately, the gap is an unobservable variable, which, in practice, has been estimated in a variety of ways, depending on the preferences of the modeler. This model selection problem leads to a...

We develop a multivariate dynamic factor model that exploits euro area country-specific information on output and inflation for estimating an area-wide measure of the output gap. In the proposed multi-country framework we moreover allow for flexible stochastic volatility (SV) specifications for...

Using a small Bayesian dynamic factor model of the euro area we estimate the deviations of output from its trend that are consistent with the behavior of inflation. We label these deviations the output gap. In order to pin-down the features of the model, we evaluate the accuracy of real-time...

Accurate real-time macroeconomic data are essential for policy-making and economic nowcasting. In this paper, I introduce a real-time database for German regional economic accounts (READ-GER). The database contains real-time information for nine macroeconomic aggregates and the 16 German states....

Global inflation has surged to 7.5 percent in August 2022, from an average of 2.1 percent in the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, threatening to become an entrenched phenomenon. This paper disentangles the confluence of contributing factors to the post-pandemic rise in consumer price...

This study presents a core-periphery model to determine the optimal size of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), building on Jeanne and Ranciere (2011). While the periphery is subject to a probability of losing access to external credit, the core's incentive for setting up an ESM stems...