Abstract:
Macroeconomic forecasting in recessions is not easy due to the inherent asymmetry of business cycle phases and the increased uncertainty about the future path of the teetering economy. I propose a mixed-frequency threshold vector autoregressive model with common stochastic volatility in mean (MF-T-CSVM-VAR) that enables to condition on the current state of the business cycle and to account for time-varying macroeconomic uncertainty in form of common stochastic volatility in a mixed-frequency setting. A real-time forecasting experiment highlights the advantage of including the threshold feature for the asymmetry as well as the common stochastic volatility in mean in MF-VARs of different size for US GDP, inflation and unemployment. The novel mixed-frequency threshold model delivers better forecasts for short-term point and density forecasts with respect to GDP and unemployment--particularly evident for nowcasts during recessions. In fact, it delivers a better nowcast than the US Survey of Professional Forecasters for the sharp drop in GDP during the Great Recession in 2008Q4.