01856cas a2200265 a 4500 AALejournalIMF007157 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781455254293 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Liu, Philip. Real-time Forecasts of Economic Activity for Latin American Economies / Philip Liu, Rafael Romeu, Troy Matheson. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2011. 1 online resource (25 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students Macroeconomic policy decisions in real-time are based the assessment of current and future economic conditions. These assessments are made difficult by the presence of incomplete and noisy data. The problem is more acute for emerging market economies, where most economic data are released infrequently with a (sometimes substantial) lag. This paper evaluates "nowcasts" and forecasts of real GDP growth using five alternative models for ten Latin American countries. The results indicate that the flow of monthly data helps to improve forecast accuracy, and the dynamic factor model consistently produces more accurate nowcasts and forecasts relative to other model specifications, across most of the countries we consider. Mode of access: Internet Matheson, Troy. Romeu, Rafael. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2011/098 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2011/098/001.2011.issue-098-en.xml IMF e-Library