Two separate events designed for academics and practitioners who conduct surveys, analyse survey data, and develop or make use of cyclical indicators were organised back to back between September 19 and 23.

The first event was co-ordinated by OECD, which organised a one-day workshop on Business Surveys and Consumer Tendency Surveys.

During the workshop a number of contributors presented work and papers undertaken at national and international levels following the Joint European Commission - OECD Workshop on International Development of Business and Consumer Tendency Surveys held in Brussels last November.

The workshop addressed recently developed international guidelines for opinion surveys, business tendency surveys response behaviour, recent OECD work on standardised confidence indicators and zone aggregates and compilation, dissemination of composite leading indicators (CLIs) for large emerging non-member economies and new recent OECD member countries, recent developments in national statistical offices and institutes on business surveys, and developments in consumer and opinion surveys.

This workshop was followed by a four-day conference organised by CIRET, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys. This event was hosted by ISAE, the Institute for Studies and Economic Analyses, the Bank of Italy, and the Faculty of Statistics of the University La Sapienza. The sponsoring partners included the Instituto G. Tagliacarne, Fondazione Unioncamere, and the Osservatorio Regionale Banca-Impresa.

This four-day event was entitled "Cyclical Indicators and Economic Policy Decisions". Several contributions were presented on the use of survey data or cyclical indicators for micro or macroeconomic analysis, composite leading indicators, business cycles, long-run cyclical fluctuations and structural breaks, local and regional surveys, consumer surveys and quantification methods of qualitative survey data.

Over 185 participants attended the conference, including FOI executive Kevin Caruana.