This paper develops Area-wide Leading Inflation CyclE (ALICE) indicators for euro area headline and core inflation with an aim to provide early signals about turning points in the respective inflation cycle. The series included in the two composite leading indicators are carefully selected from...

We analyze the predictive power of seven leading indicators for economic activity inthe Euro Area developed by different banks, institutions and research centers. Ourcomparison is conducted in a bivariate vector autoregressive framework. Indicators arecompared by means of an in-sample and an...

In this paper we assess the information content of seven widely cited early indicators for the euro area with respect to forecasting area-wide industrial production. To this end, we use various tests that are designed to compare competing forecast models. In addition to the standard...

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...

We analyze the predictive power of seven leading indicators for economic activity inthe Euro Area developed by different banks, institutions and research centers. Ourcomparison is conducted in a bivariate vector autoregressive framework. Indicators arecompared by means of an in-sample and an...

This paper contributes to the old theme of testing for rationality of inflation expectations in surveys, using two very different surveys in parallel. Focusing on the euro area and using two well-known surveys that include questions on inflation expectations, the Consensus Forecast survey and...

We review the literature on business-cycle correlation between the euro area and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), a topic that has gained attention in recent years as new EU entrants prepare for participation in the monetary union. Our meta-analysis suggests several CEECs already...

In this paper we review the methodology of forecasting with log-linearised DSGE models using Bayesian methods. We focus on the estimation of their predictive distributions, with special attention being paid to the mean and the covariance matrix of h-step ahead forecasts. In the empirical...

This paper aims at providing a detailed analysis of the leading indicator properties of corporate bond spreads for real economic activity in the euro area. In- and out-of-sample predictive content of corporate bond spreads are examined along three dimensions: the bonds’ quality , their term to...

The paper focuses on the estimation of the euro area output gap. We construct model-averaged measures of the output gap in order to cope with both model uncertainty and parameter instability that are inherent to trend-cycle decomposition models of GDP. We first estimate nine models of...