Handbook of Economic Forecasting

Chapter 4

Now-Casting and the Real-Time Data Flow

Marta Babura*^,††, Domenico Giannone^†, Michele Modugno^† and Lucrezia Reichlin^‡,     ^*European Central Bank, Kaiserstrasse 29 60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, ^†Université libre de Bruxelles, ECARES, Av. Roosevelt 50, cp 114 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium, ^‡London Business School, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, UK

Abstract

The term now-casting is a contraction for now and forecasting and has been used for a long time in meteorology and recently also in economics. In this chapter we survey recent developments in economic now-casting with special focus on those models that formalize key features of how market ...