We use a machine-learning approach known as Boosted Regression Trees (BRT) to reexamine the usefulness of selected leading indicators for predicting recessions. We estimate the BRT approach on German data and study the relative importance of the indicators and their marginal effects on the...

Die an der Gemeinschaftsdiagnose teilnehmenden Institute prognostizieren in ihrer Herbstdiagnose, dass die deutsche Wirtschaft in diesem und im kommenden Jahr um jeweils 1,8% expandieren wird. Damit setzt sich zwar der Aufschwung fort, er dürfte aber moderat bleiben. Bremsend wirkt die...

Measuring economic activity in real-time is a crucial issue in applied research and in the decision-making process of policy makers; however, it also poses intricate challenges to statistical filtering methods that are built to operate optimally under the auspices of an infinite number of...

The detection of business-cycle turning points is usually performed with non-linear discrete-regime models such as binary dependent variable (e.g., probit or logit) or Markov-switching methods. The probit model has the drawback that the continuous underlying target variable is discretized, with...