This paper asks two questions. First, can we detect empirically whether the shocks recovered from the estimates of a structural VAR are truly structural? Second, can the problem of nonfundamentalness be solved by considering additional information? The answer to the first question is yesʺ and...

This paper formalizes the process of updating the nowcast and forecast on output and inʿation as new releases of data become available. The marginal contribution of a particular release for the value of the signal and its precision is evaluated by computing "news" on the basis of an evolving...

This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries' business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant...

This paper evaluates models that exploit timely monthly releases to compute early estimates of current quarter GDP (now-casting) in the euro area. We compare traditional methods used at institutions with a new method proposed by Giannone, Reichlin, and Small (2005). The method consists in...

This paper shows that Vector Autoregression with Bayesian shrinkage is an appropriate tool for large dynamic models. We build on the results by De Mol, Giannone, and Reichlin (2008) and show that, when the degree of shrinkage is set in relation to the cross-sectional dimension, the forecasting...

This paper shows how large-dimensional dynamic factor models are suitable for structural analysis. We establish sufficient conditions for identification of the structural shocks and the associated impulse-response functions. In particular, we argue that, if the data follow an approximate factor...