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Boris Blagov

Boris Blagov

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I am an economist and a professional forecaster for RWI – Leibniz Institute of Economic Research in Essen, Germany at the division Macroeconomics and Public Finance.

I am part of the junior faculty of the Ruhr Graduate School of Economics and a research fellow of DocMA - an interdisciplinary research project in which algorithms process huge amounts of newspaper articles and texts of social media in order to recognize patterns.

On this page you will find my research, forecasts, replication codes, and previous teaching materials.

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Current research

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This paper introduces a mixed-frequency Gaussian state-space Framework that embeds forecast reconciliation into Bayesian VAR modeling for hierarchical macroeconomic data. Using precision-based sampling to generate high-frequency latent estimates, we construct a consistent proxy for the forecast-error covariance matrix, enabling optimal reconciliation with short datasets. We prove the asymptotic convergence of this estimator and show that forecast reconciliation can be formally derived as a special case of conditional forecasting, allowing straightforward implementation with Standard state-space algorithms. We derive reconciled impulse response functions (rIRFs) that ensure bottom-level structural responses aggregate exactly to the top-level impulse response. Applying the framework to UK and German regional economic data, we demonstrate improvements in the forecast accuracy alongside structurally consistent impulse responses.

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This study introduces the World Index of Political Instability (WIPI), a novel high-frequency measure that covers four dimensions of political instability in 182 countries, available from 1960 until 2024. Our measure is extracted from the curated texts of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Country Reports using text mining techniques, allowing us to track political instability on a high frequency while matching various established low-frequency proxies. We show that political instability has significant and negative short-run effects on the economy similar to a demand-side shock. In contrast to uncertainty shocks, the observed effects are not immediate but take up to one year until they materialize. The measured effects are stronger in low-income economies than in high-income economies and during recessionary periods.

Publications

[PDF] [Citation] [Slides] [Code] [DOI]

We propose a prior for VAR models that exploits the panel structure of macroeconomic time series while also providing shrinkage towards zero to address overfitting concerns. The prior is flexible as it detects shared dynamics of individual variables across endogenously determined groups of countries. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach in three applications. In the first, using a euro area dataset, we demonstrate that combining pairwise pooling with zero shrinkage helps with structural analysis by lowering the estimation uncertainty. In the second application, we use artificial data to study the bias-variance trade-off between pooling, zero shrinkage and no regularization. If the countries are similar, pooling leads only to a small bias but still provides a large reduction in the estimation variance. Finally, we use a real dataset of a large group of heterogeneous countries to demonstrate that combining pairwise pooling with zero shrinkage can improve out-of-sample forecasting relative to only zero shrinkage or only pooling specifications.

[Journal version] [Working paper] [Citation] [DOI]

Using a Bayesian Global VAR model as a methodological tool, we analyze how heightened geopolitical risk shocks propagate across advanced economies and quantify the economic effects of these events. The global VAR impulse response functions in response to the skyrocketing Russian geopolitical risk after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed a contraction of GDP and an increase in inflation. Eastern European and Baltic countries are particularly affected by the Russian geopolitical risk shock. We also document a strong component of the Russian geopolitical risk shock that is not driven by fossil fuel prices.

[Journal version] [DOI]

Political shocks impact the economy in different ways, depending of their nature. To capture these effects effectively, we present the Uncertainty Perception Indicator (UPI) based on German newspaper content. This approach combines the time-inherent stability of simple counts of articles with the thematic openness and flexibility of topic models. Using the dynamic RollingLDA technique facilitates the close-to-real-time identification of both the magnitude of an uncertainty shock and its specific characteristics. Hence, the UPI could prove highly useful for economic forecasters and policymakers, since it renders possible more timely and targeted policy reactions. Employing a Bayesian VAR approach, we analyze the effects of various UPI shocks on fixed investment and other macroeconomic variables. Our results document the asymmetric nature of uncertainty shocks, as their consequences are dependent on the respective sources of uncertainty. We find that international shocks only have weak effects on the German macroeconomy, while domestic policy shocks prove to be highly significant. These results markedly differ from earlier studies that, in the case of Germany, tend to maintain the opposite.

[Journal version] [Working paper] [Citation] [DOI]

Do inflation expectations react to changes in the volatility of monetary policy? They have, but only until the global financial crisis. This paper investigates whether increasing the dispersion of monetary policy shocks, which is interpreted as elevated uncertainty surrounding monetary policy, affects the inflation expectation formation process. Based on U.S. data since the 1980s and a stochastic volatility-in-mean structural VAR model we find that monetary policy uncertainty reduces both inflation expectations and inflation. However, after the Great Recession this link has disappeared, even when controlling for the Zero Lower Bound.

[Preprint] [PDF] [Citation] [Dataset] [Slides]

In this article we address the question of how strongly bank lending rates and credit volumes co-move across the euro area. Following the breakdown in the interest rate pass-through across the euro area, we aim to disentangle the relative importance of country-specific and common components in explaining the variance of the macro and financial variables by using a time-varying two-level dynamic factor model. Our results show that a high share is explained by the common component. However, we find a persistent decline in the importance of the common factor in the bank lending rates, indicating the presence of financial fragmentation. Furthermore, we find persistent heterogeneity across member states, specifically those hit hard by the sovereign-debt crisis.

[PDF] [Citation] [DOI]

An estimated Markov-switching DSGE modeling framework that allows for parameter shifts across regimes is employed to test the hypothesis of regime-dependent credibility of Hong Kong’s linked exchange rate system. The baseline model distinguishes two regimes with respect to the time-series properties of the risk premium. Regime-dependent impulse responses to macroeconomic shocks reveal substantial differences in spreads. To test the sensitivity of the results, a number of robustness checks are performed. The findings contribute to efforts at modeling exchange rate regime credibility as a nonlinear process with two distinct regimes.

[Journal version] [Citation] [Poster] [DOI]

This paper analyses the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on the pricing behaviour of import firms in the euro area. Uncertainty is measured via the volatility of the structural shocks to the exchange rate in a non-linear VAR framework and is an important determinant of import prices. An increase in exchange rate uncertainty is associated with a fall in prices on average, which suggests that the exchange rate risk is borne by the importers. The analysis utilizes a dataset on industrial import prices, disaggregated by origin of imports. Controlling for intra- and extra-euro area trade is important.

[Journal version] [Citation] [Code] [DOI]

Under a currency board, the central bank relinquishes control over its monetary policy and domestic interest rates converge towards the foreign rates. Nevertheless, a spread between both usually remains. This spread can be persistently positive due to elevated risk in the economy. This paper models that feature by building a DSGE model with a currency board, where the domestic interest rate is endogenously derived as a function of the foreign rate, the external debt position and an exogenous risk premium component. Time variation in the volatility of the risk premium component is then modelled via a Markov-switching component. Estimating the model with Bayesian methods and Estonian data shows that the economy does not react much to shocks to domestic interest rates in quiet times but is much more sensitive during crises, and matches the financial and banking crises, which cannot be captured by the standard DSGE model.

[PDF] [Citation] [DOI]

This paper employs a Markov regime-switching VAR model to describe and analyse the time-varying credibility of Hong Kong’s currency board system. The endogenously estimated discrete regime shifts are made dependent on macroeconomic fundamentals. This enables us to determine which changes in macroeconomic variables can trigger switches between the low and high credibility regimes. We carry out extensive testing to search for the most appropriate specification of the Markov regime-switching model. We find strong evidence of regime switching behaviour that portrays the time-varying nature of credibility in the historical data.

Working Papers

[Working paper]

We quantify the effects of US trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on its major European partners, calibrating the TPU shock to the observed jump in Q1 2025. We contrast these estimates with a tariff hike in an international general equilibrium model with production networks and find that for the European trading partners, the uncertainty is quantitatively more important than tariffs, which could be dampened by substitution and reallocation effects.

[Working paper PDF] [Citation] [DOI]

Corporate investment in Germany has been relatively weak for a prolonged period after the financial crisis. This was remarkable given that interest rates and overall economic activity, important determinants of corporate investment, developed quite favourably during that time. These developments highlight the fact that the dynamics of business cycles varies over time each cycle is somewhat different. A promising new line of research to identify the driving factors of business cycles is the use of narratives (Shiller 2017, 2020). Widely shared stories capture expectations and beliefs about the workings of the economy that may influence economic behavior, such as investment decisions. In this paper, we use Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to identify topics from news (text) data related to corporate investment in Germany and to construct suitable indicators. Furthermore, we focus on isolating those investment narratives that show the potential to lead to substantial improvement of the forecasting performance of econometric models. In our analysis, we demonstrate the benefit of using media-based indicators to improve econometric forecasts of business equipment investment. Newspaper data carries important information both on the future developments of investment (forecasting) as well as on current developments (nowcasting). Moreover, the identified investment narrative enables the researcher to improve her/his understanding of the investment process in general and allows to incorporate exogenous developments as well as economic sentiment, news and other relevant events to the analysis.

[PDF] [Citation]

Using a Markov-switching VAR with endogenous transition probabilities, we analyse what has triggered the interest rate pass-through impairment for Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. We find that global risk factors have contributed to higher lending rates in Italy and Spain, problems in the banking sector help to explain the impairment in Spain, and fiscal problems and contagion effects have contributed in Italy and Ireland. We also find that the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy announcements have had temporary positive effects in Italy. Due to the zero lower bound these findings are amplified if EONIA is used as a measure of the policy rate. We did not detect changes in the monetary policy transmission for Portugal.