0000000000309920
AUTHOR
Juuso Vataja
Economic policy uncertainty effects for forecasting future real economic activity
Recently introduced measures for Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) included in the data from 1997 - 2016 have a role in forecasting out-of-sample values for the future real economic activity for both the euro area and the UK economies. The inclusion of EPU measures, either for the US, the UK or for overall European economies, improves the forecasting ability of models based on standard financial market information, especially for the period before the 2008 global crisis. However, during and after the crisis period, the slope of the yield curve and excess stock market returns improves the out-of-sample forecast performance the most compared to an AR-benchmark model. Hence, the EPU informatio…
The role of stock markets vs. the term spread in forecasting macrovariables in Finland
Abstract A substantial body of stylized facts and empirical evidence exists regarding the relationships between financial variables and the macroeconomy in the United States. However, the question of whether this evidence is consistent with the cases of small open economies is less known. This paper focuses on the forecasting content of stock returns and volatility vs. the term spread for GDP, private consumption, industrial production and the inflation rate in Finland. Our results suggest that during normal times, the term spread is a much better tool than stock market variables for predicting real activity. However, during exceptional times, such as the recent financial crisis, the foreca…