We propose a fundamentals-based econometric model for the weekly changes in the euro-dollar rate with the distinctive feature of mixing economic variables quoted at different frequencies. The model obtains good in-sample fit and, more importantly, encouraging out-of-sample forecasting results at...

Practitioners do not always use research findings, sometimes because the research is not always conducted in a manner relevant to real-world practice. This survey seeks to close the gap between research and practice on short-term forecasting in real time. Towards this end, we review the most...

We analyze the dynamic interactions between commodity prices and output growth of the seven greatest exporters Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Using a novel definition of Markov-switching impulse response functions, we find that the...

We develop a twofold analysis of how the information provided by several economic indicators can be used in Markov-switching dynamic factor models to identify the business cycle turning points. First, we compare the performance of a fully non- linear multivariate specification (one-step...

We examine the short-term performance of two alternative approaches of forecasting from dynamic factor models. The first approach extracts the seasonal component of the individual indicators before estimating the dynamic factor model, while the alternative uses the non seasonally adjusted data...

We extend the Markov-switching dynamic factor model to account for some of the specificities of the day-to-day monitoring of economic developments from macroeconomic indicators, such as ragged edges and mixed frequencies. We examine the theoretical benefits of this extension and corroborate the...

We examine the finite-sample performance of small versus large scale dynamic factor models. Our Monte Carlo analysis reveals that small scale factor models out-perform large scale models in factor estimation and forecasting for high levels of cross-correlation across the idiosyncratic errors of...