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Can LLMs Take the Pulse of the Economy? A Real-Time Evaluation of LLM Nowcasts on Macroeconomic Indicators

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Aug 31, 2026 · UTC

Nowcasting headline macroeconomic indicators, i.e., estimating an indicator's value for the current reference period before its official release, is critical for monetary policy and financial markets, and central banks devote dedicated teams of expert economists to producing such estimates. Large language model (LLM) agents are a promising candidate for this task, combining broad world knowledge with real-time web search and supporting queries at higher frequency than institutional nowcasts. Evaluating their nowcasting capability is, however, challenging: headline indicators such as GDP and CP

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