The urgency of the two crises, especially the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed the inadequacy of traditional statistical datasets and models to provide a timely support to the decision-making process in times of volatility. Drawing upon advances in data analytics for public policy and the increasing...

Uncertainty about the current state and near-term outlook of an economy as well as the likely course of future policy actions can prompt economic agents to alter their decisions to spend, save, invest and hire. In this paper, we construct three alternative indices to measure the level of...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, economists have struggled to obtain reliable economic predictions, with standard models becoming outdated and their forecasting performance deteriorating rapidly. This paper presents two novelties that could be adopted by forecasting institutions in unconventional...