This paper performs a large-scale forecast evaluation exercise to assess the performance of different models for the short-term forecasting of GDP, resorting to large datasets from ten European countries. Several versions of factor models are considered and cross-country evidence is provided....

<b> </b> This paper evaluates models that exploit timely monthly releases to compute early estimates of current quarter GDP (now‐casting) in the euro area. We compare traditional methods used at institutions with a new method proposed by Giannone et al. The method consists in bridging quarterly GDP...

Based on a study conducted for the European Parliament, Bonn 2011 (144 pages)

We derive forecast weights and uncertainty measures for assessing the roles of individual series in a dynamic factor model (DFM) for forecasting the euro area GDP from monthly indicators. The use of the Kalman smoother allows us to deal with publication lags when calculating the above measures....

The study investigates long-run relationships between futures and spot prices of cocoa on the New York CSCE and London Fox, respectively, and between both markets. By means of the Johansen Maximum Likelihood approach and the inclusion of interest rates as conditioning variables, the three...

In the first quarter of 2009, the Austrian economy shrank at a seasonally and working day adjusted rate of 2.8 percent in real terms compared with the previous quarter (after –0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of the previous year). Hence, GDP was 3.6 percent below the year-earlier level (+0.0...