Survey data are widely used to provide indicators of economic activity ahead of the publication of official data. This paper proposes an indicator based on a theoretically consistent procedure for quantifying firm-level survey responses that are ordered and categorical. Firms' survey responses...

A range of monthly series are currently available giving indications of short-term movements in output in the United Kingdom. As the only available information, these indicators are routinely exploited in various ways although they only provide an incomplete picture of gross domestic product...

Traditionally forecasts of macroeconomic aggregates are extracted from prospective qualitative survey data by relating official data on the aggregate to both the proportion of survey respondents who are 'optimists' and the proportion who are 'pessimists'. But there is no reason to focus on these...

ECONOMY REMAINS WEAK Our monthly estimates of GDP suggest that output fell by 0.4 per cent in the three months ending in October, following on from a similar decline in the three months ending in September. The buoyancy of industrial production in September is good news, but a rise between May...

Our monthly estimates of GDP suggest that output fell by 1.5% in the three months ending in April, after the decline of 1.9% in the first calendar quarter of this year. The estimates for April themselves point to output stopping falling. Monthly data are erratic so it would be wrong to make too...

We project that the output of the economy in the three months ending in August was 0.8% higher than in the previous three months. GDP, therefore, continues to grow above trend. It is likely that there will be a need for further interest rate rises.� Our track record in producing early...

We derive monthly and quarterly series of UK GDP for the inter-war period from a set of indicators that were constructed at the time. We proceed to illustrate how the new data can contribute to our understanding of the economic history of the UK in the 1930s and have also used the series to draw...

FASTER GROWTH IN THREE MONTHS TO JANUARY Embargo until 15.00 hours on 10th February 2010 Our monthly estimates of GDP suggest that output grew by 0.4 per cent in the three months ending in January, following on from a growth of 0.1 per cent in the three months ending in December. The improvement...

This papers identifies the information content at the firm-level of qualitative business survey data by first examining the consistency between these data and the quantitative data provided by the same respondents to the UK's ONS in official surveys. Since the qualitative data are published...

Generational accounts show the net discounted life-time contribution, positive or negative, that people, as a function of their age, are expected to make to the Exchequer. Receipts include both welfare benefits and public consumption (allocated by age as far as possible) while payments are...