The October 2012 World Economic Outlook (WEO) assesses the prospects for the global recovery in light of such risks as the ongoing euro area crisis and the ""fiscal cliff"" facing U.S. policymakers. Reducing the risks to the medium-term outlook implies reducing public debt in the major advanced...

A simple criterion based on the properties of the forecast error is presented to evaluate the accuracy of forecasts. The efficiency conditions of an optimization problem are used to show that under rational expectations the standard statistical conditions are necessary, but not sufficient to...

This paper aims an empirical investigation of uncertainty in the Euro Zone as well as the US. For this purpose I conduct a factor analysis of uncertainty measures starting in 2001 until the end of 2011. I use survey-based data provided by the ECB and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia as...