Jim Hamilton proposes in an Econbrowser post a regression equation to describe oil prices using a demand factor (copper prices), USD exchange rate  and long-term US interest rates. According to model, that accounts mainly for demand side variables, a significant proportion of the decline in oil prices since mid-2014 can be explained.

The Diebold and Yilmaz paper (Economic Journal, 2009) to estimate financial spillovers using variance error decomposition in VAR models

A post by Menzie Chinn in Econbrowser on the decoupling that we observe currently in the US between strong employment and lower GDP growth. An update of the model that we dvelopped in Chinn, Ferrara and Mignon (Journal of Macro, 2014) indicates that employment is above what we could expect according to the model by around 1M of jobs.

In this paper with Giulia Sestieri we estimate a Phillips curve for the US for various measures of unemployment. By using conditional forecasts, we show that short-term unemployment reflects observed pressures on PCE inflation while long-term unemployment generates much less pressure.  This reflects the uncertainty faced by the Fed about monetary policy tightening.

Update December 2015 of the Darné-Ferrara index:

Index estimated at -0.92, well below the zero threshold indicating a change in regime. Consequently, the Euro Area cycle is still estimated to be in its deceleration phase.

(Index based on European Commission economic surveys in the industrial sector for Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Belgium. A Dynamic Factor with Markov-Switching  regimes is estimated to assess the EA acceleration cycle. See Darné and Ferrara, OBES, 2011)

Euro area acceleration cycle from Darné-Ferrara (2011, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics)