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Report
Macroeconomic nowcasting and forecasting with big data
Data, data, data . . . Economists know it well, especially when it comes to monitoring macroeconomic conditions the basis for making informed economic and policy decisions. Handling large and complex data sets was a challenge that macroeconomists engaged in real-time analysis faced long before big data? became pervasive in other disciplines. We review how methods for tracking economic conditions using big data have evolved over time and explain how econometric techniques have advanced to mimic and automate the best practices of forecasters on trading desks, at central banks, and in other ...
Working Paper
Economic Activity by Race
We observe empirical differences between races across various macroeconomic variables for the White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic populations in the U.S. For instance, the Black unemployment rate in the U.S. is more often than not double the White unemployment rate. In this paper, I treat nine macroeconomic variables as noisy indicators of economic activity and estimate an index that measures the economic activity of racial demographic groups in the U.S., called Economic Activity by Race (EAR). The noise of the indicators motivates the use of Kalman filter estimation to extract a common ...