This paper compares several methods for constructing weekly nowcasts of recession probabilities in Italy, with a focus on the most recent period of the Covid-19 pandemic. The common thread of these methods is that they use, in different ways, the information content provided by financial market...

The causal effect of the European Central Bank's corporate bond purchase program on bond spreads in the primary market is evaluated, making use of a novel regression discontinuity design. The results indicate that the program did not, on average, permanently alter the yield spreads of eligible...

In this paper we present new estimates of the effect of households' financial and real wealth on consumption. The analysis makes reference to eleven OECD countries and takes into account quarterly data from 1997 to 2008. Unlike most of the previous literature on European countries, we measure...

In this paper we present new estimates of the effect of household financial and real wealth on consumption. The analysis refers to eleven OECD countries and takes into account the years from 1997 to 2008. Unlike most of the previous literature, we exploit European quarterly harmonized data on...

This paper compares the performance of "aggregate" and "disaggregate" predictors in forecasting contemporaneously aggregated vector ARMA processes. An aggregate predictor is built by forecasting directly the aggregate process, as it results from contemporaneous aggregation of the data generating...

We develop a methodology for using intra-annual data to forecast annual budget deficits. Our approach aims at improving the accuracy of the deficit forecasts, a relevant issue to policy makers in the Eurozone and at proposing a replicable methodology using at best public quantitative information...