Real-time growth estimation with reinforcement learning

Survey data and asset prices can be combined to estimate high-frequency growth expectations. This is a specific form of nowcasting that implicitly captures all types of news on the economy, not just official data releases. Methods for estimation include the Kalman filter, MIDAS regression, and reinforcement learning. Since reinforcement learning is model-free it can estimate more efficiently. And a recent paper suggests that this efficiency gain brings great benefits for nowcasting growth expectations. Nowcasting with reinforcement learning can be applied to expectations for a variety of macro variables.

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