I evaluate German export growth and import growth forecasts published by eight professional forecasters for the years 1971 to 2019. The focus of the evaluation is on the weak and strong efficiency as well as the unbiasedness of the forecasts. To this end, I use a novel panel-data set and...

This study contributes to research on the nonparametric evaluation of German trade forecasts. To this end, I compute random classification and regression forests to analyze the optimality of annual German export and import growth forecasts from 1970 to 2017. A forecast is considered as optimal...

I evaluate German export growth and import growth forecasts published by eight professional forecasters for the years 1971 to 2019. The focus of the evaluation is on the weak and strong efficiency as well as the unbiasedness of the forecasts. To this end, I use a novel panel-data set and...

Common approaches to test for the economic value of directional forecasts are based on the classical Chi-square test for independence, Fisher’s exact test or the Pesaran and Timmerman (1992) test for market timing. These tests are asymptotically valid for serially independent observations....

Common approaches to test for the economic value of directional forecasts are based on the classical Chi-square test for independence, Fisher’s exact test or the Pesaran and Timmerman (1992) test for market timing. These tests are asymptotically valid for serially independent observations....

This paper proposes a simple procedure to obtain monthly assessments of short-run perspectives for quarterly world GDP and trade. It combines emerging and advanced countries' high frequency information to explain quarterly national accounts variables through bridge models. The union of all...

Financial crises pose unique challenges for forecast accuracy. Using the IMF's Monitoring of Fund Arrangement (MONA) database, we conduct the most comprehensive evaluation of IMF forecasts to date for countries in times of crises. We examine 29 macroeconomic variables in terms of bias,...