Is central bank transparency associated with variation in macroeconomic outcomes? Cross-country data covering 87 countries is used to construct an index for transparency based upon the detail in central banks' published forecasts. After controlling for a number of other institutional and...

Given the historical persistence of economic activity, the reduction of GDP due to confinement measures is likely to drag on over several quarters. The total GDP shortfall could be as much as twice that implied by the direct initial effects of confinement. This persistence reflects in part two...

This study analyses oil price movements through the lens of an agnostic random forest model, which is based on 1,000 regression trees. It shows that this highly disciplined, yet flexible computational model reduces in-sample root mean square errors (RMSEs) by 65% relative to a standard linear...

This study analyses oil price movements through the lens of an agnostic random forest model, which is based on 1,000 regression trees. It shows that this highly disciplined, yet flexible computational model reduces in-sample root mean square errors (RMSEs) by 65% relative to a standard linear...