We construct sentiment indices for 20 countries from 1980 to 2019. Relying on computational text analysis, we capture specific language like 'fear', 'risk', 'hedging', 'opinion', and, 'crisis', as well as 'positive' and 'negative' sentiments, in news articles from the Financial Times. We assess...

We explore the long-term impact of economic booms on labor market outcomes using a novel approach based on revisions to professional forecasts over the past 30 years for 34 advanced economies. We find that when employment rises unexpectedly, forecasters typically raise their long-term forecasts...

We use a decomposition methodology to analyze the factors underlying the differentiated output losses of European countries in 2020. Our findings are fourfold: First, 2020 growth outcomes can be explained by differences in mobility, underlying growth trends, and pre-pandemic country...

This paper identifies leading indicators of fiscal crises based on a large sample of countries at different stages of development over 1970-2015. Our results are robust to different methodologies and sample periods. Previous literature on early warning sistems (EWS) for fiscal crises is scarce...

Existing economic indicators and indexes assess economic activity but no single indicator measures the general macro-economic performance of a nation, state, or region in a methodologically simple and intuitive way. This paper proposes a simple, yet informative metric called the Economic...

One of the challenges of financial stability analysis and bank stress testing is how to establish scenarios with meaningful macro-financial linkages, i.e., taking into account spillover effects and other forms of contagion. We come up with an approach to simulate the potential impact of...

Uncertainty over economic policy plays a key role in economic outcomes. But evidence and quantification for emerging markets are elusive because of measurement and reverse causality issues. In this paper, we construct a news-based economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index for Turkey and assess how...

Early warning systems (EWS) are widely used for assessing countries' vulnerability to fiscal distress. Most EWS employ a specific set of only fiscal leading indicators predetermined by the researchers, which casts doubt on their robustness. We revisit this issue by using the Extreme Bound...

Macroeconomic costs of conflict are generally very large, with GDP per capita about 28 percent lower ten years after conflict onset. This is overwhelmingly driven by private consumption, which falls by 25 percent ten years after conflict onset. Conflict is also associated with dramatic declines...

Recent micro level data from East Africa is used to benchmark aggregate data and assess the role of agricultural inputs in explaining variation in crop yields on smallholding plots. Fertilizer, improved seeds, protection against erosion and pesticides improve crop yields in Rwanda and Ethiopia,...