Monitoring economic conditions in real time, or nowcasting, is among the key tasks routinely performed by economists. Nowcasting entails some key challenges, which also characterise modern Big Data analytics, often referred to as the three "Vs": the large number of time series continuously...

We investigate the information content of business tendency surveys for key macroeconomic variables in Switzerland. To summarise the information of a large data set of sectoral business tendency surveys we extract a small number of common factors by a principal components estimator. The...

We propose an empirical framework to measure the degree of weakness of the global economy in real-time. It relies on nonlinear factor models designed to infer recessionary episodes of heterogeneous deepness, and fitted to the largest advanced economies (U.S., Euro Area, Japan, U.K., Canada and...

We propose an empirical framework to measure the degree of weakness of the global economy in real-time. It relies on nonlinear factor models designed to infer recessionary episodes of heterogeneous deepness, and fitted to the largest advanced economies (U.S., Euro Area, Japan, U.K., Canada and...

This paper proposes comprehensive measures of the Latin American business cycle that help to infer the expected deepness of recessions, and strength of expansions, as they unfold in real time. These measures are based on the largest country economies in the region by accounting for intrinsic...

This study uses a Markov regime-switching model with time-varying means to identify subnational, sectoral, and national economic phases. The model replicates the official business cycle dates in Mexico and quantifies the contributions of states, regions, and sectors to the national recession...

In this chapter we provide a guide for the construction, use and evaluation of leading indicators, and an assessment of the most relevant recent developments in this field of economic forecasting. To begin with, we analyze the problem of indicator selection, choice of filtering methods, business...

The paper analyses reasons for departures from strong rationality of growth and inflation forecasts based on annual observations from 1963 to 2004. We rely on forecasts from the joint forecast of the so-called "six leading" forecasting institutions in Germany and argue that violations of the...