An essential element of the work of the Fund is to monitor and forecast international trade. This paper uses SWIFT messages on letters of credit, together with crude oil prices and new export orders of manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), to improve the short-term forecast of...

This paper extends earlier research by adding SWIFT data on documentary collections to the short-term forecast of international trade. While SWIFT documentary collections accounted for just over one percent of world trade financing in 2020, they have strong explanatory power to forecast world...

We develop a framework to nowcast (and forecast) economic variables with machine learning techniques. We explain how machine learning methods can address common shortcomings of traditional OLS-based models and use several machine learning models to predict real output growth with lower forecast...

We develop a framework to nowcast (and forecast) economic variables with machine learning techniques. We explain how machine learning methods can address common shortcomings of traditional OLS-based models and use several machine learning models to predict real output growth with lower forecast...