Since the advent of standard national accounts data over 60 years ago, economists have traditionally relied on monthly or quarterly data supplied by central statistical agencies for macroeconomic modelling and forecasting. However, technological advances of the past several years have resulted...

The authors analyse the macroeconomic impact of the French work-sharing reform of 2000 (a reduction of standard working hours in combination with wage subsidies). Using a vector error correction model (VECM) for several labour market variables as well as inflation and output the authors produce...

This paper deals with the estimation of employment equations for Germany, which are to be used for forecasting and simulation purposes. The authors estimate both single and system error correction equations for German working hours using quarterly raw data covering the period 1980:1-2004:2....

This paper considers factor forecasting with national versus factor forecasting with international data. We forecast German GDP based on a large set of about 500 time series, consisting of German data as well as data from Euro-area and G7 countries. For factor estimation, we consider standard...

Common approaches to test for the economic value of directional forecasts are based on the classical Chi-square test for independence, Fisher’s exact test or the Pesaran and Timmerman (1992) test for market timing. These tests are asymptotically valid for serially independent observations....

This paper derives forecasts for euro area real GDP growth based on a bottom up approach from the production side. That is, GDP is forecast via the forecasts of value added across the different branches of activity, which is quite new in the literature. Linear regression models in the form of...

The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market - rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities - led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is benign, but when they occur...

It is commonly accepted that information is helpful if it can be exploited to improve a decision making process. In economics, decisions are often based on forecasts of up- or downward movements of the variable of interest. We point out that directional forecasts can provide a useful framework...

Population aging will be a major determinant of long-run economic development in industrial and developing countries. The extent of the demographic changes is dramatic in some countries and will deeply affect future labor, financial and goods markets. The expected strain on public budgets and...

In this study we introduce a new indicator for private consumption based on search query time series provided by Google Trends. The indicator is based on factors extracted from consumption-related search categories of the Google Trends application Insights for Search. The forecasting performance...