01674cas a2200253 a 4500 AALejournalIMF017311 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781475563177 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Chen, Sophia. Financial Information and Macroeconomic Forecasts / Sophia Chen, Romain Ranciere. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2016. 1 online resource (33 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 We study the forecasting power of financial variables for macroeconomic variables for 62 countries between 1980 and 2013. We find that financial variables such as credit growth, stock prices and house prices have considerable predictive power for macroeconomic variables at one to four quarters horizons. A forecasting model with financial variables outperforms the World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecasts in up to 85 percent of our sample countries at the four quarters horizon. We also find that cross-country panel models produce more accurate out-of-sample forecasts than individual country models. Mode of access: Internet Ranciere, Romain. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2016/251 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2016/251/001.2016.issue-251-en.xml IMF e-Library