Papers › Nowcasting in a Pandemic using Non-Parametric Mixed Frequency VARs

Nowcasting in a Pandemic using Non-Parametric Mixed Frequency VARs

28 Aug 2020arXiv:2008.12706archive 2025-07-28

Florian Huber, Gary Koop, Luca Onorante, Michael Pfarrhofer, Josef Schreiner

This paper develops Bayesian econometric methods for posterior inference in non-parametric mixed frequency VARs using additive regression trees. We argue that regression tree models are ideally suited for macroeconomic nowcasting in the face of extreme observations, for instance those produced by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. This is due to their flexibility and ability to model outliers. In an application involving four major euro area countries, we find substantial improvements in nowcasting performance relative to a linear mixed frequency VAR.

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