Greater data availability has been coupled with developments in statistical theory and economic theory to allow more elaborate and complicated models to be entertained. These include factor models, DSGE models, restricted vector autoregressions, and non-linear models.

The paper compares one-period ahead forecasting performance of linear vector-autoregressive (VAR) models and single-equation Markov-switching (MS) models for two cases: when leading information is available and when it is not. The results show that single-equation MS models tend to perform...