Using business survey in industrial and services sector to nowcast GDP growth:The French case

Abstract

This paper proposes new bridge equations for the short-term French GDP forecasting. This tool allows to nowcast the quarterly GDP growth in France for the current quarter, based on the monthly business surveys in the industrial and services sectors. We use an automatic model selection procedure which brings a robust, clear and systematic framework for selecting variables. The forecasting performance for the different selected models is evaluated and we show that taking into account the business surveys in the services sector can be useful for nowcasting GDP growth rate.