This paper investigates the predictive accuracy of two alternative forecasting strategies, namely the forecast and information combinations. Theoretically, there should be no role for forecast combinations in a world where information sets can be instantaneously and costlessly combined. However,...

This paper introduces the new Monthly Index of Business Activity (MIBA) model of the Banque de France for forecasting France's GDP. As the previous versions, the model relies exclusively on data from the monthly business survey (EMC) conducted by the Banque de France. However, several major...

Recent studies emphasize that survey-based inflation risk measures are informative about future inflation and thus useful for monetary authorities. However, these data are typically available at a quarterly frequency whereas monetary policy decisions require a more frequent monitoring of such...

In short-term forecasting, it is essential to take into account all available information on the current state of the economic activity. Yet, the fact that various time series are sampled at different frequencies prevents an efficient use of available data. In this respect, the Mixed-Data...

Facing several economic and financial uncertainties, assessing accurately global economic conditions is a great challenge for economists. The International Monetary Fund proposes within its periodic World Economic Outlook report a measure of the global GDP annual growth, that is often considered...

The real interest rate gap or IRG -the gap between the short term real interest rate and its "natural" level-, is a theoretical concept that has attracted much attention in central banks in recent years. This paper aims at clarifying its practical relevance for monetary policy in real time. For...

This paper evaluates different models for the short-term forecasting of real GDP growth in ten selected European countries and the euro area as a whole. Purely quarterly models are compared with models designed to exploit early releases of monthly indicators for the nowcast and forecast of...

Standard practice for the estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models maintains the assumption that economic variables are properly measured by a single indicator, and that all relevant information for the estimation is summarized by a small number of data series. However,...

In order to provide medium run forecasts of headline and core HICP inflation for the euro area, we assess the usefulness of dynamic factor models. We use Stock and Watson's (1999) out-of-sample methodology for models estimated over the 1988:1-2002:3 period, with balanced and unbalanced panels....

The paper implements a consistent empirical strategy in order to investigate the behaviour of the markup over the cycle and its contribution to inflation movements. We model the price series as I(2) components and use polynomial cointegration in order to recover a long-run price schedule. We do...