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...

This note provides a brief overview of the work carried out under the auspices of DG ECFIN's fellowship initiative. While the economic policy agenda in Europe is currently dominated by lagging activity reflecting public and private balance-sheet problems and still impaired transmission of...

This brief discusses trends , drivers and policies related to European competitiveness in a global perspective. Over the past two decades, European industry was holding its own against both the old world competition from the US and Japan and newer rivals from China or India. But already before...