We investigate the usefulness of the European Commission confidence indicators in forecasting real GDP growth rates in the short-run in selected euro areas countries (Belgium, Spain, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands) which account for almost 90% of the euro area. We estimate a linear...

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...

Building on the literature on regularization and dimension reduction methods, we have developed a quarterly forecasting model for euro area GDP. This method consists in bridging quarterly national accounts data using factors extracted from a large panel of monthly and quarterly series including...