We assess the perception of professional forecasters regarding the effectiveness of unconventionalmonetary policy measures undertaken by the U.S. Federal Reserve after the collapse of LehmanBrothers. Using individual survey data, we analyse the changes in forecasting of bond yields aroundthe...

This paper describes how we constructed a real time database for the euro area covering more than 200 series regularly published in the European Central Bank Monthly Bulletin, as made available ahead of publication to the Governing Council members before their first meeting of the month. We...

We consider the problem of optimally combining individual forecasts of gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) dataset for the Euro Area. Contrary to the common practice of using equal combination weights, we compute optimal weights which...

The aim of this paper is to assess whether explicitly modeling structural change increases the accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts. We produce real time out-of-sample forecasts for inflation, the unemployment rate and the interest rate using a Time-Varying Coefficients VAR with Stochastic...

At a time when debt-to-GDP ratios are closely monitored in the Euro area, thispaper generates a set of stylized facts about sovereign debt and yields. First, Ipresent a new dataset on outstanding debt securities and yields for six EA countries(Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain)...

We define rank-based estimators (R-estimators) for semiparametric time series models in whichthe conditional location and scale depend on a Euclidean parameter, while the innovation density isan infinite-dimensional nuisance. Applications include linear and nonlinear models, featuring...

Standard macro models cannot explain why real exchange rates are volatile anddisconnected from macro aggregates. Recent research argues that models with persistentgrowth rate shocks and recursive preferences can solve that puzzle. I show that this resultis highly sensitive to the structure of...