In this paper, we compare the performances of balances of opinion with those of competing dis-aggregate indicators derived from the Mitchell, Smith and Weale (MSW) methodology as concerns the one-quarter forecasting of the manufactured production growth rate. The data used are the Business...

Due to their early release, Business Tendency Surveys (BTS) are widely used in short term forecasting. Their questions are mainly qualitative; answers are most often used to calculate balances of opinions, which are defined as the difference between the proportions of positive answers with...

A large majority of summary indicators derived from the individual responses to qualitative Business Tendency Survey questions (which are mostly three-modality questions) result from standard aggregation and quantification methods. This is typically the case for the indicators called balances of...