Macroeconomic forecasting in the EMU: Does disaggregate modeling improve forecast accuracy?

Accurate forecasts of aggregate European variables are crucial for conducting a union-wide monetary policy. This paper investigates empirically whether pooling forecasts from disaggregate models is a promising strategy for forecasting actual macroeconomic European variables. In contrast to previous studies we formulate an intermediate case of disaggregation with regard to forecast combination by pooling forecasts obtained from models which are separately specified and estimated for subgroups of actual EMU Member States. Moreover, by modeling different degrees of monetary autonomy across countries during the EMS-era we explicitly account for cross-country heterogeneity in advance of 1999. We find that policymakers might obtain more accurate forecasts of actual European macroeconomic variables by pooling subgroup-specific forecasts compared to forecasting with a single union-wide model.