This paper examines whether data from business tendency surveys are useful for forecasting the macro economy (GDP, unemployment, price and wage inflation, interest rates, exchange-rate changes etc.) in the short run. The starting point is a so-called dynamic factor model (DFM), which is used...

For the past four years, the EU has issued country-specific recommendations for economic reform to its Member States under the European Semester. A synthetic indicator of EU-wide implementation of these recommendations shows a score of just over 40%. While this is higher than what some critics...