The Federal Reserve Greenbook forecasts of real GDP, inflation and unemployment are analysed for the period 1974-1997. We consider whether these forecasts exhibit systematic bias, and whether efficient use is made of information, that is, whether revisions to these forecasts over time are...

A number of methods of evaluating the validity of interval forecasts of financial data are analysed, and illustrated using intraday FTSE100 index futures returns. Some existing interval forecast evaluation techniques, such as the Markov chain approach of Christoffersen (1998), are shown to be...

We evaluate the predictive power of leading indicators for output growth at horizons up to 1 year. We use the MIDAS regression approach as this allows us to combine multiple individual leading indicators in a parsimonious way and to directly exploit the information content of the monthly series...

We consider tests of forecast encompassing for probability forecasts, for both quadratic and logarithmic scoring rules. We propose test statistics for the null of forecast encompassing, present the limiting distributions of the test statistics, and investigate the impact of estimating the...

UK inflation has varied greatly in response to many economic policy and exchange-rate regime shifts, two world wars and two oil crises, as well as legislative and technological changes. Inflation is modelled as responding to excess demands from all sectors of the economy: goods and services,...