Step by Step ‒ A Quarterly Evaluation of EU Commission's GDP Forecasts
Katja Heinisch
Journal of Forecasting,
Vol. 44 (3),
2025
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.
Read article
Research Articles
Research Articles Explore cutting-edge research based on CompNet’s micro-aggregated firm-level data and related analytical tools. These articles cover empirical and theoretical…
See page
IWH-CompNet 1st ProdTool Workshop
IWH-CompNet 1st ProdTool Workshop 26-27 February, 2026 - Vienna, Austria The IWH-CompNet 1st ProdTool Workshop (26–27 February 2026, Vienna) successfully brought together experts,…
See page
TSI Concluding Conference – March 17-18, 2025, Berlin
TSI Concluding Conference 17-18 March 2025 in Berlin The TSI Concluding Conference , held in Berlin on March 17–18, 2025 , brought together key stakeholders from across the TSI…
See page
Overview
About the project Project Information: ProdTool – NPB 2.0: Micro-Data Analysis Tool 2.0 for comparative productivity studies at National Productivity Boards (Project acronym:…
See page
Overview
About the project Project Information: Microdata platform for productivity Participating Countries: Slovakia, Slovenia, France, Germany, Portugal, Latvia and Austria. Coordinated…
See page
Reports
Reports Flagship Firm Productivity Report 2023 Introducing the release of the 2023 Flagship Firm Productivity Report , providing critical insights into the short-term impact of…
See page
4th TSI Workshop
4th TSI Workshop The 4th Technical Support Instrument (TSI) Workshop was a significant event in the TSI program series, focusing on enhancing collaboration among National…
See page
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…
See page
Monetary Policy
Monetary policy How firms respond to sudden changes in profitability affects the process of job creation, job destruction, aggregate investment and how fast resources are…
See page
