It is investigated whether euro area variables can be forecast better based on synthetic time series for the pre-euro period or by using just data from Germany for the pre-euro period. Our forecast comparison is based on quarterly data for the period 1970Q1-2003Q4 for 10 macroeconomic variables....

type="main" xml:id="obes12053-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>We suggest to use a factor model based backdating procedure to construct historical Euro-area macroeconomic time series data for the pre-Euro period. We argue that this is a useful alternative to standard contemporaneous aggregation methods. The...</p>

Many contemporaneously aggregated variables have stochastic aggregation weights. We compare different forecasts for such variables, including univariate forecasts of the aggregate, a multivariate forecast of the aggregate that uses information from the disaggregated components, a forecast which...

Previous euro area money demand studies have used aggregated national time series data from the countries participating in the European Monetary Union (EMU). However, aggregation may be problematic because macroeconomic convergence processes have taken place in the countries of interest....