This paper seeks to identify the largest two shocks that can explain the movement in Canadian GDP for the period 1981Q1 to 2011Q4. I employ a very flexible identification method proposed by Uhlig (2003) that allows us to identify the key shocks from the time series data without imposing any...

Economic sentiment surveys are carried out by all European Union member states on a monthly basis. The survey outcomes are used to obtain early insight into future economic evolutions and often receive extensive press coverage. Based on these surveys, the European Commission constructs an...

In this paper we provide probability forecasts of key Turkish macro economic variables such as inflation and output growth. Some probabilistic forecasts of different scenarios associated to those variables are also calculated. The probability forecasts take different types of uncertainties...

MOSOE Konjunkturzenit überschritten Die jüngsten Statistiken deuten auf ein weiterhin robustes BIP-Wachstum in den meisten Ländern Mittel‑, Ost- und Südosteuropas (MOSOEL) hin. Der konjunkturelle Höhepunkt scheint allerdings bereits überschritten zu sein. Einerseits lässt die Dynamik...

We quantify disagreement about the economy with ex-ante measures of divergence of opinion among economic forecasters and investigate if economic disagreement has a significant impact on the cross-sectional pricing of individual stocks. We find a significant disagreement premium of 7.2% per...

This paper revisits Keynes's (1930) essay titled "The economic possibilities for our grandchildren." We discuss the three broader trends identified by Keynes that he expected would come to characterize the socio-economic evolution of advanced countries under individualistic capitalism: first,...

Participants in meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) regularly produce individual projections of real activity and inflation that are published in summary form. These summaries indicate participants' views about the most likely course for the macro-economy but, by themselves, are...

This paper presents an update of the structural macroeconometric model of the Polish economy NECMOD. The updated version of the model is, similarly as its predecessor, used at the National Bank of Poland for forecasting and policy simulation exercises. NECMOD is a hybrid, medium-scale and...

We analyze Granger causality testing in a mixed-frequency VAR, where the difference in sampling frequencies of the variables is large. Given a realistic sample size, the number of high-frequency observations per low-frequency period leads to parameter proliferation problems in case we attempt to...

Mixed frequency Bayesian vector autoregressions (MF-BVARs) allow forecasters to incorporate a large number of mixed frequency indicators into forecasts of economic activity. This paper evaluates the forecast performance of MF-BVARs relative to surveys of professional forecasters and investigates...