Objective: The objective of the article is to prove the empirical and predictive value of the aggregate opinions of businesses and households for expanding cyclical macroeconomic data in Russia, especially during the coronavirus shocks. Research Design & Methods: We use qualitative information...

In this paper we propose a new real-time forecasting model for euro area GDP growth, D€STINY, which attempts to bridge the existing gap in the literature between large- and small-scale dynamic factor models. By adopting a disaggregated modelling approach, D€STINY uses most of the information...

This paper presents a stress indicator for the eurozone that summarizes developments of trends and cycles in real GDP and inflation in the member countries. Stress in a country is defined as the difference between the country's actual short-term interest rate and the interest rate that would...

The article proposes a new set of composite indicators-predictors in business tendency surveys, which allow identifying early information signals of a cyclical nature in the economic behavior of business agents. The main criterion for the efficiency of such indicators is their sensitivity to a...

This study proves the efficiency of the results of business and consumer surveys for the first early estimates of GDP growth in Russia. For the expert community, the use of this alternative information, which is not revised over time and covers major economic activities, is essential when...

This paper focuses on testing non-stationary real-time data for forecastability, i.e., whether data revisions reduce noise or are news, by putting data releases in vector-error correction forms. To deal with historical revisions which affect the whole vintage of time series due to redefinitions,...

The accuracy of real-time forecasts of macroeconomic variables that are subject to revisions may crucially depend on the choice of data used to compare the forecasts against. We put forward a flexible time - varying parameter regression framework to obtain early estimates of the final value of...

We evaluate the usefulness of satellite-based data on nighttime lights for the prediction of annual GDP growth across a global sample of countries. Going beyond traditional measures of luminosity, such as the sum of lights within a country's borders, we propose several innovative distribution-...

We extend the work done in our “Redux” paper from Oct 2011 to find a weighted composite U.S coincident economic index (CEI) that includes non-zero weightings from all 50 states and when used in a standard Probit model, produces a perfect correlation (R2 of 1) to NBER recession dating. We...

To date, only annual information on economic activity is published for the 16 German states. In this paper, we calculate quarterly regional GDP estimates for the period between 1995 to 2020, thereby improving the regional database in Germany. The new data set will regularly be updated when...