Interest rate data are an important element of macroeconomic forecasting. Projections of future interest rates are not only an important product themselves, but also typically matter for forecasting other macroeconomic and financial variables. A popular class of forecasting models is linear...

This paper surveys recent developments in the evaluation of point and density forecasts in the context of forecasts made by Vector Autoregressions. Specific emphasis is placed on highlighting those parts of the existing literature that are applicable to direct multi-step forecasts and those...

The estimation of large vector autoregressions with stochastic volatility using standard methods is computationally very demanding. In this paper we propose to model conditional volatilities as driven by a single common unobserved factor. This is justified by the observation that the pattern of...

In this paper we examine how the forecasting performance of Bayesian VARs is affected by a number of specification choices. In the baseline case, we use a Normal-Inverted Wishart prior that, when combined with a (pseudo-) iterated approach, makes the analytical computation of multi-step...

Small or medium-scale VARs are commonly used in applied macroeconomics for forecasting and evaluating the shock transmission mechanism. This requires the VAR parameters to be stable over the evaluation and forecast sample, or to explicitly consider parameter time variation. The earlier...