Data, data, data . . . Economists know it well, especially when it comes to monitoring macroeconomic conditions—the basis for making informed economic and policy decisions. Handling large and complex data sets was a challenge that macroeconomists engaged in real-time analysis faced long before...

This paper formalizes the process of updating the nowcast and forecast on out-put and inflation as new releases of data become available. The marginal contribution of a particular release for the value of the signal and its precision is evaluated by computing "news" on the basis of an evolving...