Based on German business cycle forecast reports covering 10 German institutions for the period 1993-2017, the paper analyses the information content of German forecasters' narratives for German business cycle forecasts. The paper applies textual analysis to convert qualitative text data into...

This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime. We show that anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts crimes against refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage. To establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in the timing of major...

We evaluate the economic value of business cycle forecasts for potential investors on financial markets as opposed to statistical measures of forecasts accuracy. Taking Germany as an example, and based on annual data ranging from 1990 to 2016 covering 16 institutions and 18 different forecasts,...

Based on monthly data covering the period from 1987 to 2019, we analyse whether cross-sectional moments of stock market returns may provide information about the future position of the German business cycle. We apply in-sample forecasting regressions with and without leading indicators as...

The paper describes the "Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) Forecasting Dashboard (ForDas)". This tool aims at providing, on a non-commercial basis, historical and actual macroeconomic forecast data for the Germany economy to researchers and interested audiences. The database renders it...

Social media companies are under scrutiny for the prevalence of hateful content on their platforms, but there is scarce empirical evidence of the consequences of regulating such content. We study this question in the context of the ``Network Enforcement Act'' (NetzDG) in Germany, which mandates...