Recent theoretical work suggests that signs of asset returns are predictable given that their volatilities are. This is the first paper to investigate whether the demand for information, approximated by the daily internet search volume index (SVI) from Google, can enhance volatility forecasts...

The shadow economy (SE) is a pathological normalcy, not only in developing countries but also in developed ones, causing disagreeable distortions in the real economy. In this paper, we estimate the size of the informal sector in nineteen countries of the European Union (EU) by implementing three...