We develop a framework to nowcast (and forecast) economic variables with machine learning techniques. We explain how machine learning methods can address common shortcomings of traditional OLS-based models and use several machine learning models to predict real output growth with lower forecast...

Machine learning is increasingly applied to time series data, as it constitutes an attractive alternative to forecasts based on traditional time series models. For independent and identically distributed observations, cross-validation is the prevalent scheme for estimating out-of-sample...