Recent rises in macroeconomic volatility have prompted the introduction of quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) models to forecast macroeconomic risk. This paper provides an extensive evaluation of the predictive performance of QVAR models in a pseudo-out-of-sample experiment spanning 112...

This paper focuses on identifying useful indicators for nowcasting GDP in Sweden. We analyze 35 monthly indicators spanning the period from 1993 to 2023. Additionally, we evaluate the group-wise performance of these indicators. The analysis is conducted using mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) and...

Aggregate financial conditions indices (FCIs) are constructed to fulfil two aims: (i) The FCIs should resemble non-model-based composite indices in that their composition is adequately invariant for concatenation during regular updates; (ii) the concatenated FCIs should outperform financial...

The German economy is stuck in a difficult position as it faces both slow growth as well as structural change. The continuing lack of orders in manufacturing, increasing international competition, and sluggish development in industry-related services are now affecting the labor market and...

This special topic investigates the extent to which selling price expectations (SPE) from the harmonised EU programme of business surveys contain leading information for forecasting short-term developments in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). The analysis is based on a...

Following a prolonged and broad-based stagnation, the EU economy resumed growth in the first quarter of this year. As projected in spring, the expansion continued at a subdued, yet steady, pace throughout the second and third quarters, amidst further abating inflationary pressures. The...

We introduce a frequency-domain forecast combination method that leverages time- and frequencydependent predictability to enhance forecast accuracy. By decomposing both the target variables (equity premium and real GDP growth) and predictor variables into distinct frequency components, this...

This paper investigates nowcasting Growth-at-Risk (GaR) using consensus forecasts from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) in the US. Incorporating SPF consensus forecasts into the conditional mean of an AR-GARCH type model significantly enhances nowcasting accuracy for GaR and the...

This paper examines the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) among German firms, leveraging firm-level data from the ifo Business Survey. We analyze the diffusion of AI across sectors and firm sizes, showing a significant increase in AI usage from 2023 to 2024, particularly in manufacturing...

At the request of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), a technical assistance (TA) mission from the Monetary and Capital Markets (MCM) department visited Nairobi, Kenya, from April 17-21, 2023, to help improve the CBK's Forecasting and Policy Analysis System (FPAS). The main objectives were to...

The German economy is stuck in a period of stagnation: Following two years of consecutive slight declines in GDP, growth is not expected for 2025 either. Weak exports, rising unemployment worries, and the resulting reserved private consumption and economic policy uncertainty are slowing the...

This study investigates the utility of business uncertainty indicators as predictive tools for forecasting economic activity in the context of Russia. In an era characterized by global economic volatility and geopolitical shifts, understanding the dynamics of economic uncertainty and its impact...

The European Commission’s growth forecasts play a crucial role in shaping policies and provide a benchmark for many (national) forecasters. The annual forecasts are built on quarterly estimates, which do not receive much attention and are hardly known. Therefore, this paper provides a...

This paper investigates the impact of news media information on improving short-term GDP growth forecasts by analyzing a large and unique corpus of 12.4 million news articles spanning from 1991 to 2018. We extract business cycle-related sentiment from each article using an annotated dataset from...