We investigate the information content of business tendency surveys for key macroeconomic variables in Switzerland. To summarise the information of a large data set of sectoral business tendency surveys we extract a small number of common factors by a principal components estimator. The...

This study utilizes the dynamic factor model of Giannone et al. (2008) in order to make now-/forecasts of GDP quarter-on-quarter growth rates in Switzerland. It also assesses the informational content of macroeconomic data releases for forecasting of the Swiss GDP. We find that the factor model...

In a pioneering attempt we present the R(ecession)-word index for Switzerland. We evaluate its predictive ability of GDP growth using real-time vintages of GDP data, closely simulating flow of information in the past. We find that inclusion of the R-word index led to statistically significant...

On the basis of keyword searches in newspaper articles several versions of the Recession-word Index (RWI) are constructed for Germany and Switzerland. We use these indices in order to track the business cycle dynamics in these two countries. Our main findings are the following. First, we show...

This study evaluates forecasting performance of a large-scale factor model developed in Siliverstovs and Kholodilin (2012) in a genuine ex ante forecasting exercise. We perform our forecast of GDP growth in Switzerland in real time using real-time data vintages collected at weekly frequency....

Most macroeconomic indicators failed to capture the sharp economic fluctuations during the Corona crisis in a timely manner. Instead, alternative high-frequency data have been used, aiming to monitor the economic situation. However, these data are often only loosely related to the business cycle...