Austria's economy is recovering over the projection period from a recession that, according to the revised National Accounts, proved comparably severe to Germany's. The rebound is driven by private consumption, while foreign trade in goods continues to contract for the time being. Residential...

As investors increasingly use Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria, a key challenge remains: ESG data is typically reported annually, while financial markets move much faster. This study investigates whether incorporating annual ESG scores can improve monthly stock return...

After two years of recession, Austria's economic output is likely to stagnate in 2025. WIFO expects GDP growth of 1.2 percent in 2026. The upturn in the global economy should then give the Austrian economy some momentum again, driven by both exports and domestic demand.

Debate persists over whether classical econometric or modern machine learning (ML) approaches provide superior forecasts for volatile monthly price series. Despite extensive research, no systematic cross-domain comparison exists to guide model selection across diverse asset types. In this study,...

Inflation dynamics reflect forces operating at different cycles, from short-lived shocks to longterm structural trends. We introduce the sum-of-the-cycles (SOC) method, which exploits this multifrequency structure of inflation for forecasting. SOC decomposes inflation into cyclical components,...

We introduce a simple yet powerful method for enhancing mutual fund performance prediction by combining individual predictors into a composite predictor. This composite approach integrates information from 19 well-established return-based and portfolio holdings-based predictors from the...

We test whether forecast bias affects individual investors' stock trading by combining bias measures from laboratory experiments with administrative trade data. Forecast bias is positively associated with past excess returns of purchased stocks: Compared to contrarians, extrapolators purchase...

Forecasts that minimize mean squared forecast error (MSE) often exhibit excessive volatility, limiting their practical applicability. We address this accuracy smoothness trade-off by introducing a Multivariate Smooth Sign Accuracy (M-SSA) framework, which extracts smoothed components from...

German and European migration policy operates in permanent crisis mode. Sudden increases in irregular immigration create a sense of loss of control, which is instrumentalised by populist forces. This has generated great interest in quantitative migration predictions. High expectations are placed...

Natural gas is a crucial element of energy supply in Great Britain (GB). The vast majority of GB gas consumption occurs in three main sectors: industry, Local Distribution Zone (residential, commercial, and services), and power generation. While there are strong seasonal patterns of demand...

The long-expected wave of LNG supply is now almost upon us, and is expected to outstrip the rise in demand for LNG. Spot prices, in European and Asian markets, may respond to the overhang of supply by moving to more short-run pricing – as was seen in 2019 and 2020 – and, as a result, prices...

This work highlights a previously overlooked factor that contributes to bias in private inflation forecasts-ignorance of confidential monetary rules. Additionally, it examines how this ignorance indirectly affects policy rate settings. The model proposed reconciles biases in two key forecast...

We provide a parsimonious setup for forecasting U.S. GDP growth and the unemployment rate based on a few fundamental drivers. This setup yields forecasts that are reasonably accurate compared with private-sector and Federal Reserve forecasts over the 1984-2019 and post-COVID-19 pandemic periods....

The rapid increase in global energy demand and the shift towards sustainable energy sources have highlighted the need for more efficient, transparent, and decentralized energy management systems. This study presents a novel blockchain-enabled marketplace designed to enhance energy trading and...

China has committed to peaking its carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060. Determining whether a CO2 emissions peak can be realistically achieved under the existing conditions of the economy and energy structure is an important issue for the regional governments...

Macroeconomic data releases are very important benchmarks of the economy. Therefore, the vast majority of financial market analysts and traders closely monitor both the projected estimates and, the intuitively more impactful actual values. In this research, we focus on the uncertainty associated...

A growth mindset-a belief that intelligence is malleable rather than a fixed trait-is a crucial factor for educational success. I investigate whether a growth mindset also plays a role in students' post-graduation life outcomes, specifically, in the pursuit of higher education in a nationwide...

This paper investigates the long-horizon predictive variance of an international bond strategy where a U.S. investor holds unhedged positions in constant-maturity long-term foreign bonds funded at domestic short-term interest rates. Using over two centuries of data from major economies, the...