Monetary policy research using time series methods has been criticized for using more information that the Federal Reserve had available in setting policy. To quantify the role of this criticism, we propose a method to estimate a VAR with real-time data while accounting for the latent nature of...

Monetary policy research using time series methods has been criticized for using more information than the Federal Reserve had available in setting policy. To quantify the role of this criticism, we propose a method to estimate a VAR with real-time data while accounting for the latent nature of...

Revisions to the U.S. personal saving rate are very large and may be predictable. We decompose the revisions of the personal saving rate into those caused by revisions to income and those caused by revisions to household outlays. We use our findings to explore the forecastability of future...

This paper describes the existing research (as of February 2008) on real-time data analysis, divided into five areas: (1) data revisions; (2) forecasting; (3) monetary policy analysis; (4) macroeconomic research; and (5) current analysis of business and financial conditions. In each area,...