Incluye referencias bibliográficas (páginas 292-302) e índice.

1. First Principles: 1.1. What to forecast? ; 1.2. Why forecast? ; 1.3. How to forecast -- 2. The Data: 2.1. The national accounts framework ; 2.2. Quarterly national accounting ; 2.3. Technical hurdles ; 2.4. Open questions and limitations -- 3. Incoming News and Near-Term Forecasting: 3.1. Monitoring the ups and downs ; 3.2. Collecting economic information ; 3.3. Business and consumer surveys ; 3.4. Making sense of the data ; 3.5. Bridge models ; 3.6. Final health warning -- 4. Time Series Methods: 4.1. Empirical extrapolation ; 4.2. ARIMA models ; 4.3. Decomposition into trend and cycle ; 4.4. VAR models -- 5. Modelling Behavior: 5.1. Enterprise investment ; 5.2. Household spending ; 5.3. Imports and exports ; 5.4. Employment ; 5.5. Prices and wages -- 6. Macroeconomic Models: 6.1. What is a macroeconomic model? ; 6.2. Forecasting with a model ; 6.3. Building alternative scenarios ; 6.4. How far can models go? -- 7. Medium- and Long-Run Projections: 7.1. The medium run ; 7.2. The long run -- 8. Financial and Commodity Markets: 8.1. Dealing with volatility ; 8.2. Interest rates ; 8.3. Bond, stock and real estate prices ; 8.4. Exchange rates ; 8.5. Commodity prices ; 8.6. Country-risk analysis -- 9. Budget Forecasts: 9.1. A more or less detailed approach ; 9.2. Forecasting budget flows over the short and medium run ; 9.3. Forecasting long-run fiscal trends ; 9.4. Putting together a budget scenario ; 9.5. Top-down and bottom-up approaches ; 9.6. Uncertainties ; 9.7. An analytical view of the budget -- 10. Sectoral Forecasting: 10.1. Microeconomic forecasts ; 10.2. Input-output analysis -- 11. Accuracy: 11.1. Conceptual issues ; 11.2. Measuring accuracy in practice ; 11.3. Analysing errors ; 11.4. Forecasters' track record ; 11.5. What causes the errors? ; 11.6. Can and should accuracy be improved? -- 12. Using the Forecasts: 12.1. Economic forecasts' virtues and limitations ; 12.2. Forecasts and macroeconomic policy ; 12.3. Private sector uses -- 13. Communication Challenges: 13.1. Explaining the technicalities ; 13.2. Transparency ; 13.3. Science or politics? -- 14. A Tour of the Forecasting Institutions: 14.1. Types of forecasters ; 14.2. International institutions ; 14.3. Forecasting bodies in selected countries."