It is widely believed that survey-based confidence indicators provide a reasonably accurate picture of economic conditions. This paper examines whether data from the business and consumer surveys conducted for the European Commission might be useful for short-term macroeconomic forecasting....

This article examines the debt dynamics facing the Irish State over the period 2011 to 2015. The analysis takes account of the reduction in interest rates on EU borrowing agreed at the EU Council meeting in July 2011 and it makes very conservative assumptions on the interest rate available after...