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Working Paper
Forecasting U.S. Economic Growth in Downturns Using Cross-Country Data
To examine whether including economic data on other countries could improve the forecast of U.S. GDP growth, we construct a large data set of 77 countries representing over 90 percent of global GDP. Our benchmark model is a dynamic factor model using U.S. data only, which we extend to include data from other countries. We show that using cross-country data produces more accurate forecasts during the global financial crisis period. Based on the latest vintage data on August 6, 2020, the benchmark model forecasts U.S. real GDP growth in 2020:Q3 to be −6.9 percent (year-over-year rate) or 14.9 ...