This paper considers how an investor in foreign exchange markets might exploit predictive information in macroeconomic fundamentals by allowing for switching between multivariate time series regression models. These models are chosen to reflect a wide array of established empirical and...

The extent of market efficiency induced by rational behaviour of market participants is central for economic research. Many economists have already examined sports-betting markets as a laboratory to better understand trading behaviour and efficiency of stock prices while avoiding to jointly test...

We report results of a survey among active forecasters of the German business cycle. Using data for 82 respondents from 37 different institutions, we investigate what models and theories forecasters subscribe to and find that they are pronounced conservative in the sense, that they...

Time-varying parameter models with stochastic volatility are widely used to study macroeconomic and financial data. These models are almost exclusively estimated using Bayesian methods. A common practice is to focus on prior distributions that themselves depend on relatively few hyperparameters...

We use a Markow-switching dynamic factor model with three states for Germany with indicators selected by the Elastic Net. The states represent expansions, normal - and severe recessions. Adding a third state helps to identify all business cycle turning points in-sample and in real-time....

In many empirical applications, a combined density forecast is constructed using the linear pool which aggregates several individual density forecasts. We analyze the linear pool in a mean/variance prediction space setup. Our theoretical results indicate that a well-known 'disagreement' term can...

We derive new tests for proper calibration of multivariate density forecasts based on Rosenblatt probability integral transforms. These tests have the advantage that they i) do not depend on the ordering of variables in the forecasting model, ii) are applicable to densities of arbitrary...

In choice problems with many alternatives and a priori uncertain outcomes, it has long been argued that individuals may use the observed choices of others as information to guide their own decisions. This paper analyses the role of these social interactions in the context of restaurant choice,...

In this paper we reexamine the relative role of soft and hard data in terms of short-term GDP forecasting. We employ mixed frequency models (MF-VARS) and real-time data to investigate the relative role of survey data relative to industrial production and orders in Germany. Special emphasis is...

We evaluate whether survey-based indicators produce lower forecast errors for export growth than indicators obtained from hard data such as price and cost competitiveness measures. Our pseudo out-of-sample analyzes and forecast encompassing tests reveal that survey-based indicators outperform...