If theory-consistent models can ever hope to forecast well and to be useful for policy, theyhave to relate to data which though rich in information is uncertain, unbalanced and sometimes forecastsfrom external sources about the future path of other variables. One example from many is financial marketdata, which can help but only after smoothing out irrelevant short-term volatility. In this paper we proposecombining different types of useful but awkward data set with a linearised forward-looking DSGE modelthrough a Kalman Filter fixed-interval smoother to improve the utility of these models as policy tools. Weapply this scheme to a model for Colombia.
