€-coin: the Euro Area Economy in One Figure

 See €-coin in real time

What is €-coin?

On 20th September 2007 the Banca d'Italia and CEPR launched €-coin, a new economic activity indicator for the Euro area. It replaces the old Eurocoin index published monthly by CEPR. €-coin is a real-time, monthly estimate of area-wide GDP growth. It provides a single number summarizing the current economic outlook for the Euro area. To view the presentations at the launch meeting, click here.

Publication of €-coin will begin on a regular (monthly) basis on September 28, 2007 at 09:30 CET. Future releases are scheduled for 29th October and 29th November. 

€-coin is obtained by collecting a large set of statistics (such as industrial production, surveys, stock markets and financial data, demand indicators) and extracting from it the information that is relevant to forecast future GDP. It tracks GDP growth anticipating official GDP releases by several months. It is a “smooth version” of GDP growth, that:
(i) gives each month an early estimate of Euro area growth performance in terms of quarter on quarter changes in GDP;
(ii) sheds light on the underlying trend by removing short run fluctuations and measurement errors from the growth rate: in this respect it is not only a forecast, but also a clearer indicator of the true growth momentum in the Euro area.

 

Recent Realtime Estimates of €-coin

MONTH	€-COIN
March 2007	0.79
April 2007	0.76
May 2007	0.72
June 2007	0.74
July 2007	0.72
August 2007	0.71

A detailed account of the methodology and the construction of Eurocoin can be found in Banca d’Italia, Temi di Discussione n. 631 (or CEPR Discussion Paper no. 5633), while background theory is in a scholarly article by Mario Forni, Marc Hallin, Marco Lippi and Lucrezia Reichlin in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (2005) 100, pp. 830-40.

 

The €-coin launch: After a volatile summer, where do we stand? Eurocoin and the growth outlook for the Euro area

Chair:

Richard Portes (CEPR and LBS)

Speakers:

Ignazio Visco (Deputy Director General, Banca d'Italia) Lucrezia Reichlin (Director General Research, European Central Bank) Julian Callow (Director and Chief European Economist, Barclays Capital)

 

Hosted by CEPR on Thursday, 20 September, 2007.