Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

We compare several machine learning methods for nowcasting GDP. A large mixed-frequency data set is used to investigate different algorithms such as regression based methods (LASSO, ridge, elastic net), regression trees (bagging, random forest, gradient boosting), and SVR. As benchmarks, we use univariate models, a simple forward selection algorithm, and a principal components regression. The analysis accounts for publication lags and treats monthly indicators as quarterly variables combined via blocking. Our data set consists of more than 1,100 time series. For the period after the Great Recession, which is particularly challenging in terms of nowcasting, we find that all considered machine learning techniques beat the univariate benchmark up to 28 % in terms of out-of-sample

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Over the past years, the natural rate of interest (r*) – defined as the real interest rate consistent with stable inflation in an economy operating at full capacity in the medium term – has become an important reference point for monetary policy. The difference between the real interest rate and r* gives a measure of a central bank’s monetary policy stance. Monetary policy is restrictive if the real interest rate is above r* and it is expansionary if it is below r*. Therefore, evaluating where the real interest rate is relative to r* helps to structure discussions about monetary policy options. However, r* is unobserved and has to be estimated from the data. These estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty, which complicates their use in the monetary policy process.

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss

Required: These cookies (e.g. for storing your IP address) cannot be rejected as they are necessary to ensure the operation of the website. These data are not evaluated further.Analytics: If you consent to this category, data such as IP address, location, device information, browser version and site visitor behaviour will be collected. These data are evaluated for the SNB’s internal purposes and are kept for two years.Third-party: If you consent to this category, third-party services (used, for example, to add social multimedia content to the SNB’s website) will be activated which collect personal data, process these data, disclose them abroad – worldwide – and place cookies. The relevant data protection regulations are linked in the ‘Privacy statement for the website of the Swiss