We identify government spending news and surprise shocks using a novel identification based on the Survey of Professional Forecasters. News shocks lead, through an increase of the interest rate, to a real appreciation of US dollar and a worsening of the trade balance. The opposite is found for...

This paper presents ideas and methods underlying the construction of an indicator that tracks the euro area GDP growth, but, unlike GDP growth, (i) is updated monthly and almost in real time; (ii) is free from short-run dynamics. Removal of short-run dynamics from a time series, to isolate the...