Using Macrofinancial Models to Simulate Macroeconomic Developments During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Albania

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on the economy tested the capacity of current macroeconomic models to forecast economic developments in turbulent times. In this article, we develop a linear macrofinancial model for Albania and examine whether it can predict the developments of key macroeconomic and financial variables during 2020–2021. To address increased uncertainty in the forecasts, we construct uncertainty bands with quantile regressions. The results indicate that, in general, a linear model is flexible enough to analyze non-linear events and may thus be used in abnormal times.