This paper assesses the practical experience of monetary analysis at the ECB from the introduction of the euro in 1999 through 2006. The paper exploits a unique and rich real-time data set, containing both the vintages of data and the economic models that have been employed in the ECB's monetary...

This Paper is the result of the Bank of Italy-CEPR project to construct a monthly coincident indicator of the business cycle of the euro area. The index is estimated on the basis of a harmonized data set of monthly statistics of the euro area (951 series) which we constructed from a variety of...

Equilibrium business cycle models have typically less shocks than variables. As pointed out by Altug, 1989, and Sargent, 1989, if variables are measured with error, this characteristic implies that the model solution for measured variables has a factor structure. This Paper compares estimation...