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We construct a measure of global liquidity using the growth rates of broad money for the G7 economies. Global liquidity produces forecasts of U.S. inflation that are significantly more accurate than the forecasts based on U.S. money growth, Phillips curve, and autoregressive and moving average models. The marginal predictive power of global liquidity is strong at 3-year horizons. Results are robust to alternative measures of inflation. JEL codes: C22, C53, E37, E47 Keywords: predictive accuracy, global liquidity, money growth, inflation., ACCURATE INFLATION FORECASTS are essential for successful monetary policymaking. Effective predictors are essential for producing accurate forecasts. In the recent past, characterized by low and stable inflation, researchers in academia [...]

This paper provides new evidence on the role of expectations for the change in unemployment dynamics over time. We show that unanticipated changes in expectations display large and persistent effects on the unemployment rate in the 2007–09 downturn, contributing to maintain unemployment high well after the most recent recession. We also find that the changes in the autocorrelation of the unemployment rate and its correlation with inflation generated by unanticipated changes in unemployment expectations help to rationalize the pattern observed in the data in the post‐1990 recessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In any data set with individual forecasts of economic variables, some forecasters will perform better than others. However, it is possible that these ex post differences reflect sampling variation and thus overstate the ex ante differences between forecasters. In this paper, we present a simple test of the null hypothesis that all forecasters in the U.S. Survey of Professional Forecasters have equal ability. We construct a test statistic that reflects both the relative and absolute performance of the forecaster and use bootstrap techniques to compare the empirical results with the equivalents obtained under the null hypothesis of equal forecaster ability. Results suggest little support for the idea that the best forecasters are actually innately better than others, though there is evidence that a relatively small group of forecasters perform very poorly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]