Towards the end of 2009, the world economy was recovering from its deepest recession since the end of World War II. Most countries around the world took resort to fiscal policy in order to foster this recovery. In this paper, we first discuss the pros and cons of discretionary fiscal policy from...

From a theoretical perspective, the output gap is probably the most comprehensive and convincing concept to describe the cyclical position of an economy. Unfortunately, for practical purposes, the concept depends on the determination of potential output, which is an inherently unobservable...

In 2009, KOF was mandated to analyse the business tendency surveys (BTS) conducted on a monthly basis by the Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (BCRP) and to assess the potential to develop coincident and/or leading indicators for core economic variables of the Peruvian economy. The analysed...

In 2009, KOF was mandated to analyse the business tendency surveys (BTS) conducted on a monthly basis by the Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (BCRP) and to assess the potential to develop coincident and/or leading indicators for core economic variables of the Peruvian economy. The analysed...

From a theoretical perspective, the output gap is probably the most comprehensive and convincing concept to describe the cyclical position of an economy. Unfortunately, for practical purposes, the concept depends on the determination of potential output, which is an inherently unobservable...

We evaluate nowcasts and one- to four-quarter-ahead forecasts of Swiss full time equivalent jobs from 1998–2011, comparing forecasts of the KOF Swiss Economic Institute and of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs with the outcome of the reference series. Both forecasts are biased...