Economic models are the tools of decision makers in governments and central banks. As such, they affect our everyday lives. But what is the actual track record of these models, and do they really work? Applying them in real time and validating them on a day-by-day basis leads to a clear...

This essay argues that the current global financial and political system was not designed for a technology-driven society and, as such, is unfit for purpose. In short, it is a “broken bicycle”; no matter how expert the rider, the result will always be failure. To fix the bicycle, we have to...

This paper investigates the complex interrelationships of qualitative socio-economic variables in the context of Boolean Regression. The data forming the basis for this investigation are from the German Micro-census waves of 1996 2002 and comprise about 400 000 observations. Boolean Regression...

The paper examines the informational content of a series of macroeconomic indicator variables with the intention to predict stock market downturns - colloquially also referred to as 'bear markets' - for G7 countries. The sample consists of monthly stock market indices and a set of exogenous...

This paper contributes to the literature on the properties of money and credit indicators for detecting asset price misalignments. After a review of the evidence in the literature on this issue, the paper discusses the approaches that can be considered to detect asset price busts. Considering a...