This paper models industrial new orders across European Union (EU) Member States for various breakdowns. A common modelling framework exploits both soft data (business opinion surveys) and hard data (industrial turnover). The estimates show for about 200 cases that the model determinants...

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

This paper analyses the contribution of survey data, in particular various sentiment indicators, to nowcasts of quarterly euro area GDP. It uses a genuine real-time dataset that is constructed from original press releases in order to transform the actual dataflow into an interpretable flow of...

The paper compares the most closely watched sentiment indicators with respect to their ability to nowcast quarterly GDP dynamics in the Euro Area and its biggest economies. We analyse cross-correlations and out-of-sample forecast errors generated from equations estimated by rolling regressions...

By using the Economic Sentiment Indicator and Autoregressive Markov Switching models, this paper provides an effective tool to identify and characterize expectations of business cycle phases for Germany, Spain, the Euro Area, and the European Union. This information is useful for policy makers...