UCL Economics launches MacroMonitor

The Department of Economics at University College London (UCL) today launched the UCL MacroMonitor, an open-access dashboard providing real-time, data-driven insights into the UK’s economic trajectory. In a volatile, post-pandemic global environment where official economic releases lag significantly behind real-world changes, decisionmakers and the public require swift, actionable signals. The UCL MacroMonitor addresses this critical gap by delivering high-frequency, objective benchmark forecasts for UK economic performance.

The platform tracks two core indicators using cutting-edge statistical frameworks:

• The UK GDP Nowcast: Updated every Monday at 12:00 PM, this tool synthesises 22 macroeconomic variables across production, demand, labour, trade, and surveys. It maps the state of the current quarter's economic activity as fresh data arrives.
• The CPI Inflation Forecast: Updated monthly on Thursdays at 12:00pm following official ONS releases, this model forecasts CPI inflation for the next 12 months. It strips out transitory shocks to reveal long-run trends in headline inflation and across 11 distinct components.

Rigorous Backtesting and Credible Performance

Unlike traditional consensus forecasts that rely heavily on discretionary adjustments, the UCL MacroMonitor is purely statistical and completely transparent.

• Performance: Extensive pseudo-out-of-sample backtesting against historical data demonstrates that the platform's objective models deliver high quality signals, performing well against commercial GDP nowcasts and Office for Budget Responsibility and Bank of England inflation forecasts.
• Uncertainty and Transparency: Every release incorporates clear confidence bands to quantify uncertainty around the forecasts alongside a detailed data decomposition, allowing users to instantly understand which underlying data releases are driving revisions and look through short-term economic noise.

"Our mission is to democratise timely, frontier economic intelligence outside of major financial and policy institutions," said the design team, led by UCL economists Daniel Lewis, Raffaella Giacomini, and Lars Nesheim.

"By creating a credible, transparent, and completely public benchmark, we hope to stimulate a richer, data-driven public and media debate about the UK’s macroeconomic outlook."

The UCL MacroMonitor is fully operational and free to access for journalists, policymakers, academics, and the public. Visitors can view real-time estimates, read weekly commentary, and download full historical forecast archives (in .csv format) directly at macromonitor.org.

About the UCL Department of Economics
The Department of Economics at University College London (UCL) is one of the world's leading research and teaching institutions, consistently ranked at the frontier of global economic science. 

Disclaimer: The estimates provided by the dashboard represent academic research and are not official forecasts of University College London.