In this paper we challenge the conventional view that increasing working time exibility limits the amplitude of unemployment fluctuations. We start by showing that hours per worker in European countries are much less procyclical than in the US, and in some economies even co-move negatively with...

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models have recently become standard tools for policy-oriented analyses. Nevertheless, their forecasting properties are still barely explored. We fill this gap by comparing the quality of real-time forecasts from a richly-specified DSGE model to those from...

A common practice in policy making institutions using DSGE models for forecasting is to re-estimate them only occasionally rather than every forecasting round. In this paper we ask how such a practice affects the accuracy of DSGE model-based forecasts. To this end we use a canonical medium-sized...

This paper compares the quality of forecasts from DSGE models with and without financial frictions. We find that accounting for financial market imperfections does not result in a uniform improvement in the accuracy of point forecasts during non-crisis times, while the average quality of density...

This paper introduces a formal method of combining expert and model density forecasts when the sample of past forecasts is unavailable. It works directly with the expert forecast density and endogenously delivers weights for forecast combination, relying on probability rules only. The empirical...

This paper compares the quality of forecasts from DSGE models with and without financial frictions. We find that accounting for financial market imperfections does not result in a uniform improvement in the accuracy of point forecasts during non-crisis times while the average quality of density...

We run a real exchange rate forecasting "horse race", which highlights that two principles hold. First, forecasts should not replicate the high volatility of exchange rates observed in sample. Second, models should exploit the mean reversion of the real exchange rate over long horizons. Abiding...

This paper introduces a formal method of combining expert and model density forecasts when the sample of past forecasts is unavailable. It works directly with the expert forecast density and endogenously delivers weights for forecast combination, relying on probability rules only. In the...