The aim of this paper is to assess whether explicitly modeling structural change increases the accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts. We produce real time out-of-sample forecasts for inflation, the unemployment rate and the interest rate using a Time-Varying Coefficients VAR with Stochastic...

This paper examines the out‐of‐sample forecast performance of sectoral stock market indicators for real GDP, private consumption and investment growth up to 4 quarters ahead in the US and the euro area. Our findings are that the predictive content of sectoral stock market indicators: i) is...

A number of academic studies suggest that from the mid-1990s onwards there were changes in the link between inflation and economic activity. However, it remains unclear the extent to which this phenomenon can be ascribed to a change in the structural relationship between inflation and output, as...

The issue of forecast aggregation is to determine whether it is better to forecast a series directly or instead construct forecasts of its components and then sum these component forecasts. Notwithstanding some underlying theoretical results, it is generally accepted that forecast aggregation is...

This paper provides a discussion of methodological issues relating to the estimation of the long-run relationship between exchange rates and fundamentals for Central and Eastern European acceding countries, focusing on the so-called behavioural equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach. Given...

This paper analyses the impact of productivity developments in the United States and the euro area on the euro-dollar exchange rate. The paper presents a new measure of relative average labour productivity (ALP), which does not suffer from the biases implicit in readily available relative ALP...

This paper examines the long-run determinants of the euro-yen exchange rate. Using cointegration analysis, we find a consistent and significant relationship between the real exchange rate and relative productivity, the net foreign asset position, relative government spending and terms of trade...

In this paper we examine linkages across non-energy commodity price developments by means of a factor-augmented VAR model (FAVAR). From a set of non-energy commodity price series, we extract two factors, which we identify as common trends in metals and a food prices. These factors are included...

Using OECD composite leading indicators (CLI), we assess empirically whether the ability of the country-specific CLIs to predict economic activity has diminished in recent years, e.g. due to rapid advances in globalisation. Overall, we find evidence that the CLI encompasses useful information...