Statistical analysis of cyclical fluctuations:the role of official statisticians - Products Statistical working papers

Infra-annual macro-economic statistics represent nowadays a key tool for economic policy-making and business cycle analyses. The demand for timely and good quality infra-annual macro-economic statistics for the Eurozone has strongly increased since the advent of the monetary union in 1999. Although considerable progresses have been made over recent years in this area, further improvements are needed for many EU/Eurozone statistics as far as concerns timeliness, coverage, convergence of revision practices and policies, and appropriate length of time series. In effect, the traditional approach based on harmonisation has serious drawbacks, at least in the short-medium period, as it can induce breaks in the series and may cause delays in the provision of final estimates at the aggregated level, and difficulties can sharply increase in the near future as a consequence of the enlargement process of the EU. At this stage, statistical and econometric methods can play a greater role to get timely figures, long time series and even to construct new indicators. These methods, now an integral part of the Euro-TREND module of Eurostat's five annual program, can provide users with estimates until the usual process based on harmonisation will give more reliable and complete figures. This paper, after a review of the institutional framework, analyses projects and researches conducted by Eurostat in numerous fields relevant for business cycle analyses. Firstly, it examines the results of researches - backward calculation of time series, temporal disaggregation, nowcasting and revision analyses - oriented towards an improvement of specific dimensions of data quality. Secondly, it concentrates on some instruments aimed at improving the informative contents of infra-annual statistics, such as seasonal adjustment, business cycle estimation, identi- fication of turning points, and construction of composite indicators of business cycles.