The papers in this special issue of Mathematics and Computers in Simulation cover the following topics. Improving judgmental adjustment of model-based forecasts, whether forecast updates are progressive, on a constrained mixture vector autoregressive model, whether all estimators are born equal....

The buildup in government debt in response to the “great recession,” has raised a number of policy dilemmas for individual countries as well as the world as a whole. The recent need for a change of fiscal policy stance has fuelled debates about the impact of fiscal consolidation on domestic...

We use a structural dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to investigate how initial data releases of key macroeconomic aggregates are related to final revised versions and how identified aggregate shocks influence data revisions. The analysis sheds light on how well preliminary data...

This paper incorporates heterogeneous agents into a NNS model with nominal inertia. Heterogeneous households are introduced into NNS models to try and reconcile the movements in interest rates, consumption and inflation. The key findings here are that heterogeneity and wage inertia are needed to...

This paper assesses the performance of a number of long-term interest rate forecast approaches, namely time series models, structural economic models, expert forecasts and combinations thereof. The predictive performance of these approaches is compared using out of sample forecast errors, where...

March 2011 marked the introduction of the MNB’s Monetary Policy Model (MPM), representing a paradigm shift in both inflation forecasting and monetary policy decision support. In contrast to the previous conditional projections, the MPM offers an endogenous definition for both the policy rate...

The difference between nominal and real interest rates (break-even inflation) is often used to gauge the market’s inflation expectations—and has become an important tool in monetary policy analysis. However, break-even inflation can move in response to shifts in inflation risk premia and...

Do private analysts coordinate their forecasts via central bank forecasts? In this paper, we examine private and central bank forecasts for the Czech Republic. The evolution of the standard deviation of private forecasts as well as the distance from the central bank’s forecasts are used...

This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

This paper develops an estimable hybrid model that combines the micro-founded DSGE model with the flexibility of the theoretical VAR model. The model is estimated via the maximum likelihood technique based on quarterly data on real Gross National Product (GNP), consumption, investment and hours...