Forecast errors are large in the recently acceded Member States and the mistakes have a similar order of magnitude in the Commission services' forecasts, Consensus forecasts and projections made by national authorities. The prediction mistakes cannot be attributed to bias or autocorrelation....

This paper revisits options for fiscal anchors in Australia against the backdrop of a medium-term budget balance anchor that has led to larger than expected upward drift in the net debt to GDP ratio since the end of the mining investment boom. The IMF's G20MOD model is used to compare the budget...

This paper revisits options for fiscal anchors in Australia against the backdrop of a medium-term budget balance anchor that has led to larger than expected upward drift in the net debt to GDP ratio since the end of the mining investment boom. The IMF's G20MOD model is used to compare the budget...

While in the Commission Forecasts interest rates, exchange rates or oil prices are treated more like assumptions, it is interesting to test their realism. It appears that these variables are formulated in a reasonably accurate way and that in general alternative assumptions would not improve the...

This paper argues that the Commission forecasts dispose of a reasonable track record. Most of the traditional tests for examining the quality of predictions are passed in a satisfactory way. The comparisons with forecasts made by the IMF, OECD and national forecast institutes are not...

This paper discusses an approach to estimate euro area GDP quarterly growth over two quarters ahead. The estimates are derived from separate single equations for each quarter to be forecast using OLS including a moving error term. The explanatory variables describe real economic activity or its...

Forecast errors are large in the recently acceded Member States and the mistakes have a similar order of magnitude in the Commission services' forecasts, Consensus forecasts and projections made by national authorities. The prediction mistakes cannot be attributed to bias or autocorrelation....