A financial conditions index (FCI) is designed to summarise the state of financial markets. Two are constructed with UK data. The first is the first principal component of a set of financial indicators. The second comes from a new approach taking information from a large set of macroeconomic...

This paper analyses the forecasting ability of economic summary indicators in EU economies. We employ the use of Partial Least Squares and Bayesian Shrinkage Regression methods and we predict the growth rates of quarterly GDP and Consumption and monthly Industrial Production. We find evidence...

This paper investigates the performance of Financial Condition Indexes (FCIs) in forecasting four key macroeconomic variables of EU economies. A wide range of carefully selected financial indicators include Rates and Spreads, Stock Market Indicators and Macroeconomic Quantities. The results...

This paper assesses the forecasting performance of various variable reduction and variable selection methods. A small and a large set of wisely chosen variables are used in forecasting the industrial production growth for four Euro Area economies. The results indicate that the Automatic Leading...

This paper assesses the forecasting performance of various variable reduction and variable selection methods. A small and a large set of wisely chosen variables are used in forecasting the industrial production growth for four Euro Area economies. The results indicate that the Automatic Leading...