This paper suggests an affine term structure model of real interest rates to predict changes in real consumption growth. The model is estimated, jointly, by real interest rates and consumption data, and it is found to be consistent with the consumption smoothing hypothesis. The paper shows that...

Many macroeconometric models depict situations where the shares of the major demand aggregates in output are stable over time. The joint dynamic behavior of the considered demand aggregate and output may thus be approximated by a cointegrated vector autoregression. However, the shares of many...

We suggest a theoretical basis for the comparative evaluation of forecasts. Instead of the general assumption that the data is generated from a stochastic model, we classify three stages of prediction experiments: pure non-stochastic prediction of given data, stochastic prediction of given data,...

This paper presents a framework for quantifying uncertainty around point forecasts for GDP, inflation and house prices in Norway. The framework combines quantile regressions using a broad set of uncertainty indicators with a skewed t-distribution, allowing for time-variation and asymmetry in the...

German unification hit the West German economy in a prosperous and appeared as a huge demand shock at least for the first few quarters. This combination resulted in a major increase of imports from the main trading partners of West Germany, which may have helped to cushion recessionary trends...

This paper introduces macroeconomic forecasters as political agents and suggests that they use their forecasts to in uence voting outcomes. We develop a probabilistic voting model in which voters do not have complete information about the future states of the economy and have to rely on...

This paper introduces macroeconomic forecasters as political agents and suggests that they use their forecasts to influence voting outcomes. We develop a probabilistic voting model in which voters do not have complete information about the future states of the economy and have to rely on...

The internet has become the primary source of information for most of the population in modern economies, and as such, it provides an enormous amount of readily available data. Among these are the data on the internet search queries, which have been shown to improve forecasting models for...