Polish Economic Outlook - Trends Analyses, Forecasts (PEO)

The decision to publish Polish Economic Outlook. Trends, Analyses, Forecasts (PEO) was made after we had finished our macroeconomic model of the Polish economy (project entitled Macromodelling of the Polish Economy, accomplished in 1998; the description of the project can be found in the Report summing up the activities of the CASE Foundation in 1998 - available at the Warsaw CASE office).

Similar research was conducted by our experts in other reforming countries - the Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Georgia - where there was a need to create an independent source of forecasts of basic macroeconomic variables. In all those countries our models have become the source of high-quality forecasts which are being used by politicians responsible for economic reforms, international organisations, financial institutions and independent experts.

Thanks to this model economists collaborating with our Foundation have at their disposal a new and reliable instrument of making short- and medium-term forecasts of the basic macroeconomic variables like GDP, inflation, unemployment, balance of payments, and budget. As we have widened the scope of the model we had the possibility to publish every three months an elaborate assessment of the Polish economy. This assessment was independent of official analyses - it verified forecasts published by various public institutions.

The major source of the data were the publications of the Central Statistical Office (GUS) and the National Bank of Poland (NBP).

The Polish Economic Outlook - Trends, Analyses, Forecasts (PEO) project was launched in November 1998. Based on the model of short and medium-term forecasts of the main macroeconomic variables prepared by CASE economists, a quarterly entitled "Polish Economic Outlook - Trends, Analyses, Forecasts" has been published since 1999.

The publication consists of regular sections, which include:

• An assessment of the economic situation in the given quarter,
• Conditions for Polish economic growth - above all tendencies in the global economy and assumptions underlying the forecast,
• An analysis of the economic situation and a two-year forecast covering domestic demand, value added, the labor market, prices, core inflation, the exchange rate, foreign trade, the budget and public finances, etc.
• Statistical appendices,
• In the discussion section (which differs in each issue of the quarterly), presenting the views of well-known economists on the economic problems of Poland, as well as the results of theoretical and empirical studies carried out by CASE.

Polish Economic Outlook: Trends, Analyses, Forecasts is a source of independent opinions and reliable short- and medium-term forecasts. All texts published in the Quarterly were written by the CASE's economists - experts in macroeconomics and econometrics. The PEO was published from 1999 until 2010.

The publication of the PEO was supported financially by Bank PEKAO SA and Fortis Bank Polska SA.

Every issue of the PEO presents:

• an assessment of the current situation of the Polish economy;
• short- and medium-term forecasts of the major macroeconomic variables including:
  • GDP,
  • domestic demand,
  • value-added,
  • labour market,
  • interest rates,
  • prices,
  • exchange rate,
  • foreign trade
  • budget deficit;
• statistical appendix
• a "special topic"

Successive issues of the PEO were published at the end of every quarter. They are available in PDF format on our website.