Economic Recovery in the Euro Area has lost momentum in the second half of 2015. Due to dampening effects from the world economy and a marked increase in political uncertainty, a number of sentiment indicators also point downwards. Nevertheless, domestic demand increased rather strongly, while...

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...

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...

[...] in many situations a decision does not have to be made immediately, but can be delayed until additional information has been acquired. Sequential analysis seems particularly applicable to the problem of predicting turning points in the business cycle (Palash and Radecki, 1985). Elaborating...

Most of the Euro-zone economic short-term indicators are computed through aggregation from Member States data. The seasonally adjusted figures can be calculated by seasonally adjusting the aggregate (direct approach) or aggregating the seasonally adjusted national data (indirect approach)....

In this paper, we investigate the impact of the adjustment for seasonal effects with different seasonal adjustment methods, the possible pre-treatment for calendar effects and the different order of aggregation and adjustment for the determination of the turning points of the European business...