Models recently studied by Farmer (2012, 2013, 2015) predict that, due to labor-market frictions and "animal spirits", stock-market fluctuations should Granger cause fluctuations of the unemployment rate. We performed several Granger-causality tests on more than half a century of data of German...

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...

Most macroeconomic data is continuously revised as additional information becomes available. We suggest that revisions of data is an increasingly important source of uncertainty about the state of the economy and offer an alternative channel of uncertainty - data uncertainty. This paper adds on...

Recent price developments in the euro area demonstrate that deflation is a serious issue of concern. Some euro area countries are already facing a deflation in the usual macroeconomic sense of a 'general price decline'. This article discusses the economic consequences of deflation and suggests...