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Nowcasting GDP Growth by Reading Newspapers

Author

Listed:
  • Clément Bortoli

    (INSEE)

  • Stéphanie Combes

    (INSEE)

  • Thomas Renault

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

GDP statistics in France are published on a quarterly basis, 30 days after the end of the quarter. In this article, we consider media content as an additional data source to traditional economic tools to improve short-term forecast/nowcast of French GDP. We use a database of more than a million articles published in the newspaper Le Monde between 1990 and 2017 to create a new synthetic indicator capturing media sentiment about the state of the economy. We compare an autoregressive model augmented by the media sentiment indicator with a simple autoregressive model. We also consider an autoregressive model augmented with the Insee Business Climate indicator. Adding a media indicator improves French GDP forecasts compared to these two reference models. We also test an automated approach using penalised regression, where we use the frequencies at which words or expressions appear in the articles as regressors, rather than aggregated information. Although this approach is easier to implement than the former, its results are less accurate.

Suggested Citation

  • Clément Bortoli & Stéphanie Combes & Thomas Renault, 2018. "Nowcasting GDP Growth by Reading Newspapers," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-03205161, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-03205161
    DOI: 10.24187/ecostat.2018.505d.1964
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Necmettin Alpay Koçak, 2020. "The Role of Ecb Speeches in Nowcasting German Gdp," European Financial and Accounting Journal, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2020(2), pages 05-20.
    3. Aguilar, Pablo & Ghirelli, Corinna & Pacce, Matías & Urtasun, Alberto, 2021. "Can news help measure economic sentiment? An application in COVID-19 times," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    4. Massimo Baldini & Andrea Barigazzi, 2024. "Surnames in Local Newspapers and Social Mobility," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 859-879, September.
    5. Luca Barbaglia & Sergio Consoli & Sebastiano Manzan, 2024. "Forecasting GDP in Europe with textual data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 338-355, March.
    6. Julian Ashwin & Eleni Kalamara & Lorena Saiz, 2024. "Nowcasting Euro area GDP with news sentiment: A tale of two crises," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(5), pages 887-905, August.
    7. KOCAK, Necmettin Alpay, 2021. "The Impacts Of Speeches On Nowcasting Gdp: A Case Study On Euro Area Markets," Studii Financiare (Financial Studies), Centre of Financial and Monetary Research "Victor Slavescu", vol. 25(1), pages 6-29, March.
    8. Rudrani Bhattacharya & Bornali Bhandari & Sudipto Mundle, 2023. "Nowcasting India’s Quarterly GDP Growth: A Factor-Augmented Time-Varying Coefficient Regression Model (FA-TVCRM)," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 21(1), pages 213-234, March.
    9. Simionescu, Mihaela, 2022. "Econometrics of sentiments- sentometrics and machine learning: The improvement of inflation predictions in Romania using sentiment analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    10. Santos, Anabela M. & Coad, Alex, 2023. "Monitoring and evaluation of transformative innovation policy: Suggestions for Improvement," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic analysis; nowcasting; GDP; media; Big Data; sentiment analysis; machine learning; natural language analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

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