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...

Since September 2004, Insee has published the results of its business survey in the services sector on a monthly basis together with a synthetic indicator. This indicator is extracted from both monthly and quarterly balances of opinion derived from the survey. The methodological framework is...

In Lisbon the European Council proclaimed a European growth strategy. It considers an average economic u0093growth rate of around 3 percent as a realistic prospect for the coming yearsu0094 and assigns public finances an important role in the process of achieving this goal. This paper addresses...