Sectoral Survey-based Confidence Indicators for Europe

Abstract

We analyse a novel dataset of Business and Consumer Surveys, using dynamic factor techniques, to produce composite coincident indices (CCIs) at the sectoral level for the European countries and for Europe. Surveys are timely available, not subject to revision, and fully comparable across countries. Moreover, the substantial discrepancies in activity at the sectoral level justify the interest in sectoral disaggregation. Compared with the confidence indicators produced by the European Commission we show that factor-based CCIs, using survey answers at a more disaggregate level, produce higher correlation with the reference series for the majority of sectors and countries.