After the 2008 recessionary shock, the world activity seems to have come to a standstill. In 2009, world output will fall by 1.3% ‘‘only’’ -2.5% in the US, 3.8% in the euro area and 5.9% in Japan. Thanks to expansionary public policies, the bank crisis and the deflation have been curbed....

We develop a new version of the production function (PF) approach usually used for estimating the output gap of the euro area. Our version does not call for any (often imprecise) measure of the capital stock and improves the estimation of the trend total factor productivity. We asses this...