It is commonly accepted that information is helpful if it can be exploited to improve a decision making process. In economics, decisions are often based on forecasts of up- or downward movements of the variable of interest. We point out that directional forecasts can provide a useful framework...

This analysis investigates the predictive power of the most important leading indicators for the German economy, which are provided by the ifo Institute and IHS Markit. We conduct an out-of-sample, real-time forecast experiment for growth of gross domestic product and growth of gross value added...

The aim of this paper is to analyze and estimate salient characteristics of unemployment dynamics. Movements in unemployment are viewed as "chain reactions" of responses to labor market shocks, working their way through systems of interacting lagged adjustment processes. In the context of...

Estimated DSGE models have become the standard workhorse model for empirically based macroeconomic analysis in recent years. In this paper, we present an estimated DSGE model for Denmark. The model has been estimated using Bayesian methods and a dataset consisting of 23 macroeconomic variables....

This paper examines macroeconomic effects and transmission mechanisms of COVID19 in Mongolia, a developing and commodity-exporting economy, by estimating a Bayesian structural vector autoregression on quarterly data. We find strong cross-border spillover effects of COVID-19. Our estimates...

What is the probability of high inflation; how high, when? These questions are important to all investors since even the 2% level to which we are accustomed will cut an investor's portfolio by over 17% during a decade. This 2% level is the target of the Federal Reserve, along with near 0%...

We propose a multicountry quantile factor augmeneted vector autoregression (QFAVAR) to model heterogeneities both across countries and across characteristics of the distributions of macroeconomic time series. The presence of quantile factors allows for summarizing these two heterogeneities in a...

We investigate the question of whether macroeconomic variables contain information about future stock volatility beyond that contained in past volatility. We show that forecasts of GDP growth from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Professional Forecasters predict volatility in a cross-section of...

We explore the long-term impact of economic booms on labor market outcomes using a novel approach based on revisions to professional forecasts over the past 30 years for 34 advanced economies. We find that when employment rises unexpectedly, forecasters typically raise their long-term forecasts...

Is there a link between loose monetary conditions, credit growth, house price booms, and financial instability? This paper analyzes the role of interest rates and credit in driving house price booms and busts with data spanning 140 years of modern economic history in the advanced economies. We...