Neurocomputational Forecasting of Economic Shocks

Economic forecasting in turbulent times is a challenge requiring utilization of innovative methods. Here we present a model from computational neuroscience and show its usefulness for macroeconomic forecasting. We compare its accuracy with that of the European Commission toolkit, used to prepare the macroeconomic outlook for EU27 countries during the 2020 pandemic. On import and export of goods and services, our model outperforms the forecasts of the Commission for almost half of the countries.