The COVID-19 pandemic has already struck a hard blow, affecting economies all over the world. At the current juncture, it still represents a relevant source of uncertainties, as new variants have recently emerged and witness a fast spread. To these adds the threat to economic activity induced by the ongoing war in Ukraine. In this context, a robust assessment of the current state of the economy is relevant to both policymakers – when formulating the mix of economic policies - and people outside public administration – for further decisions on consumption, saving and investment. The aim of this paper is to build a representative economic activity index in the case of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Empirical evidence provided by the principal component analysis shows an incomplete pass-through of external shocks. The representative index for economic activity also points to temporary positive effects induced by policy measures introduced during the pandemic which could have been higher in the lack of existing structural deficiencies.
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