In recent years, survey-based measures of expectations and disagreement have received increasing attention in economic research. Many forecast surveys ask their participants for fixed-event forecasts. Since fixed-event forecasts have seasonal properties, researchers often use an ad-hoc approach...

We use the Pitman-closeness criterion to evaluate the performance of multivariate forecasting methods and we also calculate optimal matrices of weights for the linear combination of multivariate forecasts. These weights are identical with the optimal weights under the matrix-MSE criterion.

The paper deals with forecasting of spot prices in bulk shipping using simultaneous equations models (SEMs) during the present economic crisis, emphasizing the importance of such models in empirical applied economics and for decision-makers. The SEMs predictive performance on the spot market is...

In periods of unusual weather, forecasters face a problem of interpreting economic data: Which part goes back to the underlying economic trend and which part arises from a special weather effect? In this paper, we discuss ways to disentangle weather-related from business cycle-related influences...