Under the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), European Union (EU) Member States commit themselves to avoid excessive deficits over 3% of GDP and to pursue the medium-term objective of budgetary positions close to balance or in surplus. The SGP also provides regulation for...

Testing and estimating the rank of a matrix of estimated parameters is key in a large variety of econometric modelling scenarios. This article describes general methods to test for and estimate the rank of a matrix, and provides details on a variety of modelling scenarios in the econometrics...

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, Reichlin and Small, 2005. The method consists in bridging...