A number of recent studies in the macro-finance literature that addresses the link between asset prices and economic fluctuations have focused on the usefulness of various factor models in the context of now-casting using very big dataset. The issue of factor extraction is usually swept under...

In this paper, we assess the predictive content of latent economic policy uncertainty and data surprises factors for forecasting and nowcasting GDP using factor-type econometric models. Our analysis focuses on five emerging market economies, including Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and...