Unemployment is notoriously difficult to predict. In previous studies, once country fixed effects are added to panel estimates, few variables predict changes in unemployment rates. Using panel data for 29 European countries - Austria; Belgium; Bulgaria; Croatia; Cyprus; Czechia; Denmark; Estonia;...

Unemployment is notoriously difficult to predict. In previous studies, once country and year fixed effects are added to panel estimates, few variables predict changes in unemployment rates. Using panel data for 29 European countries collected by the European Commission over 444 months between...

Enforcement of European fiscal rules, to a large extent, hinges on the fiscal forecasts prepared by the European Commission (EC). The reliability of these forecasts has received little attention in the literature, despite the fact that i) the forecasts have potentially far-reaching consequences...

This paper investigates the quantitative forecasting methods and procedures in transport policy making and criticises the existing applications based on the forecasting profession. Although many scholars presented predictions for transportation purposes, many of these predictions are out of the...

The paper attempts to determine regional unemployment rates for NUTS 2 regions based on data available on a regular basis from Eurostat and ILO. In the first part it is shown how the evolution of regional unemployment rates is determined by national unemployment rates by industry and the...

Can economic theory help - forecasting key macroeconomic variables? This article aims to provide some insight into the question by drawing lessons from the literature. The definition of ‘economic theory’ includes a broad range of examples, such as accounting identities, disaggregation and...

In this paper, we compare two popular statistical learning techniques, logistic regression and random forest, with respect to their ability to classify jobseekers by their likelihood to become long-term unemployed. We study the performance of the two methods before the COVID-19 pandemic as well...

This paper studies the predictability of long-term unemployment (LTU) and analyzes its main determinants using rich administrative data in Sweden. Compared to using standard socio-demographic variables, the predictive power more than doubles when leveraging the rich data environment. The largest...

In an era characterized by population aging and economic challenges in welfare states across the world, sustaining these welfare systems requires a large workforce. Many individuals outside the labor market aspire to work but encounter a labyrinth of obstacles. While Public Employment Services...