Business confidence announcements attract widespread attention, yet relatively little is known about the series itself. What, for example, does an improvement or deterioration in business confidence mean? We consider this question using a panel of firm-level responses to a business opinion...

Purpose - The goal of this paper is twofold. First, to examine the role of expectations in shaping agents' behaviour within an extended time frame which incorporates a prolonged harsh downturn of economic activity. Therefore, the authors allow for an indirect impact of economy-wide expectations...

Markov regime-switching analysis is used to consider the relationship between business confidence and the probability of turning points in cyclical GDP. We find, in an application to New Zealand, that confidence is related to both the deepness and duration of the business cycle and is asymmetric...

In this paper, an Unobserved Components Model is used to decompose the balances of Ifo Business survey data into the cyclical, the seasonal and the irregular components, as well as the working day effect. The empirical results show that the total cycle consists of three subcycles with about 3, 5...

In addition to quantitative assessment of economic growth using econometric models, business cycle analyses have been proved to be helpful to practitioners in order to assess current economic conditions or to anticipate upcoming fluctuations. In this paper, we focus on the acceleration cycle in...

Business surveys are an important element in the analysis of the short-term economic situation because of the timeliness and nature of the information they convey. Especially, surveys are often involved in econometric models in order to provide an early assessment of the current state of the...

This publication presents analysis of handling regular business surveys of Russian industrial enterprises, information capacity of such surveys and analytical findings. Analysis summarizes 18 years experience of IEP’s surveys: from the choice of envelopes for sending questionnaires to obtained...

This publication presents analysis of handling regular business surveys of Russian industrial enterprises, information capacity of such surveys and analytical findings. Analysis summarizes 18 years experience of IEP’s surveys: from the choice of envelopes for sending questionnaires to obtained...

Business surveys aim at getting, as quickly and as simply as possible, the recent and probable changes in economic activity. Answers to most of the questions are qualitative with three modalities (qualification of an evolution: up / stable / down). The qualitative indicators provided by these...