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Alumni

IWH Alumni The IWH maintains contact with its former employees worldwide. We involve our alumni in our work and keep them informed, for example, with a newsletter. We also plan…

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10th Vintage

The CompNet 10th Vintage Dataset 10th Vintage dataset is now available! The CompNet dataset provides a comprehensive set of micro-aggregated indicators, specifically designed to…

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Gender Equality & Anti-Discrimination

Equal Opportunities at IWH IWH commits to actively promoting equal opportunities for men and women, going beyond already existing guidelines. In 2013, 2016, 2019, 2022 and again…

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Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice

Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice (IWH-CEP) The Centre for Evidence-based Policy Advice (IWH-CEP) of the IWH was founded in 2014. It is a platform that bundles and…

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Research Clusters

Three Research Clusters Each IWH research group is assigned to a topic-oriented research cluster. The clusters are not separate organisational units, but rather bundle the…

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Teaching

Teaching Within the framework of its cooperations with both German and foreign universities IWH researchers are actively committed to teaching by offering academic courses. These…

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Step by Step ‒ A Quarterly Evaluation of EU Commission's GDP Forecasts

Katja Heinisch
IWH Discussion Papers, No. 22, 2024
published in: Journal of Forecasting
Abstract

The European Commission’s growth forecasts play a crucial role in shaping policies and provide a benchmark for many (national) forecasters. The annual forecasts are built on quarterly estimates, which do not receive much attention and are hardly known. Therefore, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of multi-period ahead quarterly GDP growth forecasts for the European Union (EU), euro area, and several EU member states with respect to first-release and current-release data. Forecast revisions and forecast errors are analyzed, and the results show that the forecasts are not systematically biased. However, GDP forecasts for several member states tend to be overestimated at short-time horizons. Furthermore, the final forecast revision in the current quarter is generally downward biased for almost all countries. Overall, the differences in mean forecast errors are minor when using real-time data or pseudo-real-time data and these differences do not significantly impact the overall assessment of the forecasts’ quality. Additionally, the forecast performance varies across countries, with smaller countries and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) experiencing larger forecast errors. The paper provides evidence that there is still potential for improvement in forecasting techniques both for nowcasts but also forecasts up to eight quarters ahead. In the latter case, the performance of the mean forecast tends to be superior for many countries.

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Department Profiles

Research Profiles of the IWH Departments All doctoral students are allocated to one of the four research departments (Financial Markets – Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets –…

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Halle Institute for Economic Research

Job Market candidates from the IWH-DPE 2025/2026 Marius Fournés' dissertation explores how climate policy shapes cross-border capital flows and how globalisation influences…

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Trade and Competitiveness

Trade and Competitiveness The investigation delves into the mechanisms through which productivity diffuses within Global Value Chains (GVC), assessing how national firms respond…

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