In this paper we present a methodology which can help to improve the assessment of the current economic situation. We propose an approach which combines multivariate single equations to forecast the monthly growth rate of industrial production with a density forecast. This allows to estimate the...

This paper investigates the differences between directly and indirectly seasonally adjusted aggregates. This difference is derived analytically for linear seasonal adjustment methods. GDP data for five European countries and three classes of seasonal adjustment methods are used to show...

Germany's CPI inflation stood at 6.1% in May 2023 and was thus more than one percentage point lower than in April 2023 (7.2%). Food prices contributed slightly less to inflation, but at 2.1 percentage points still almost seven times as much as usual. The contribution of household energy was nine...

This paper analyzes the real-time out-of-sample performance of three kinds of combination schemes. While for each the set of underlying forecasts is slightly modified, all of them are real-time recession probability forecasts generated by a dynamic probit indicator. Among the considered...

This paper uses several macroeconomic and financial indicators within a Markov Switching (MS) framework to predict the turning points of the business cycle. The presented model is applied to monthly German real-time data covering the recession and the recovery after the financial crisis. We show...

This paper provides market risk calculation for an equity-based trading portfolio. Instead of relying on the purely stochastic internal model method, which banks currently apply in line with the Basel regulatory requirements, we propose to include also alternative price mechanisms from the...