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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 117 No. 3 2015

Distilling the macroeconomic news flow

Alessandro Beber1,2; Michael W. Brandt3; Maurizio Luisi4

1 Centre for Economic Policy Research · 2 City, University of London · 3 Duke University · 4 Bloomberg LP, United Kingdom

Abstract

We propose a simple cross-sectional technique to extract daily factors from economic news released at different times and frequencies. Our approach can effectively handle the large number of different announcements that are relevant for tracking current economic conditions. We apply the technique to extract real-time measures of inflation, output, employment, and macroeconomic sentiment, as well as corresponding measures of disagreement among economists about these indices. We find that our procedure provides more timely and accurate forecasts of future changes in economic conditions than other real-time forecasting approaches.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2015.05.005
Volume
117
Issue
3
Pages
489-507
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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