Survey data as coincident or leading indicators

In this paper we propose a monthly measure for the euro area gross domestic product (GDP) based on a small-scale factor model for mixed-frequency data, featuring two factors: the first is driven by hard data, whereas the second captures the contribution of survey variables as coincident indicators. Within this framework we evaluate both the in-sample contribution of the second survey-based factor, and the short-term forecasting performance of the model in a pseudo-real-time experiment. We find that the survey-based factor plays a significant role for two components of GDP: industrial value added and exports. Moreover, the two-factor model outperforms in terms of out-of-sample forecasting accuracy the traditional autoregressive distributed lags (ADL) specifications and the single-factor model, with few exceptions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.