Medium-term (five-year) fiscal planning is complicated by uncertainty surrounding projections of real GDP. The slowdown in growth rate in the late 1970s and the recent upsurge in growth during the late 1990s provide lessons on how unanticipated movements in underlying trends can have a major...

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we introduce the importance of utilising real-time data for macroeconomic analysis by reviewing the relevant literature on real-time analysis and by looking at real-time output data sets for Canada and the US. Although the use of real-time data has...