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New Indicators for Tracking Growth in Real Time

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  • Mr. Troy D Matheson

Abstract

We develop monthly indicators for tracking growth in 32 advanced and emerging-market economies. We test the historical performance of our indicators and find that they do a good job at describing the business cycle. In a recursive out-of-sample forecasting exercise, we find that the indicators generally produce good GDP growth forecasts relative to a range of time series models.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Troy D Matheson, 2011. "New Indicators for Tracking Growth in Real Time," IMF Working Papers 2011/043, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2011/043
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    Cited by:

    1. Michele Modugno & Lucrezia Reichlin & Domenico Giannone & Marta Banbura, 2012. "Nowcasting with Daily Data," 2012 Meeting Papers 555, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Caroline Jardet & Baptiste Meunier, 2022. "Nowcasting world GDP growth with high‐frequency data," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(6), pages 1181-1200, September.
    3. Mr. Maxym Kryshko, 2011. "Data-Rich DSGE and Dynamic Factor Models," IMF Working Papers 2011/216, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Tesi Aliaj & Milos Ciganovic & Massimiliano Tancioni, 2023. "Nowcasting inflation with Lasso‐regularized vector autoregressions and mixed frequency data," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(3), pages 464-480, April.
    5. Bańbura, Marta & Giannone, Domenico & Modugno, Michele & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2013. "Now-Casting and the Real-Time Data Flow," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 195-237, Elsevier.
    6. Laurent Ferrara & Clément Marsilli, 2019. "Nowcasting global economic growth: A factor‐augmented mixed‐frequency approach," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 846-875, March.
    7. Chernis, Tony & Cheung, Calista & Velasco, Gabriella, 2020. "A three-frequency dynamic factor model for nowcasting Canadian provincial GDP growth," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 851-872.
    8. Barhoumi, Karim & Darné, Olivier & Ferrara, Laurent, 2016. "A World Trade Leading Index (WTLI)," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 111-115.
    9. Alain Kabundi & Elmarie Nel & Franz Ruch, 2016. "Nowcasting Real GDP growth in South Africa," Working Papers 581, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    10. António Afonso & João Jalles, 2014. "A longer-run perspective on fiscal sustainability," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 821-847, November.
    11. Bhattacharya, Rudrani & Pandey, Radhika & Veronese, Giovanni, 2011. "Tracking India Growth in Real Time," Working Papers 11/90, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    12. Daniel Hopp, 2021. "Economic Nowcasting with Long Short-Term Memory Artificial Neural Networks (LSTM)," Papers 2106.08901, arXiv.org.
    13. Alain Galli, 2018. "Which Indicators Matter? Analyzing the Swiss Business Cycle Using a Large-Scale Mixed-Frequency Dynamic Factor Model," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 14(2), pages 179-218, November.
    14. Zhang, Qin & Ni, He & Xu, Hao, 2023. "Nowcasting Chinese GDP in a data-rich environment: Lessons from machine learning algorithms," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    15. Bańbura, Marta & Belousova, Irina & Bodnár, Katalin & Tóth, Máté Barnabás, 2023. "Nowcasting employment in the euro area," Working Paper Series 2815, European Central Bank.
    16. Gerhard Fenz & Helmut Stix, 2021. "Monitoring the economy in real time with the weekly OeNB GDP indicator: background, experience and outlook," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue Q4/20-Q1/, pages 17-40.
    17. Karim Barhoumi & Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2014. "Dynamic factor models: A review of the literature," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2013(2), pages 73-107.
    18. Hindrayanto, Irma & Koopman, Siem Jan & de Winter, Jasper, 2016. "Forecasting and nowcasting economic growth in the euro area using factor models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1284-1305.
    19. Hopp Daniel, 2022. "Economic Nowcasting with Long Short-Term Memory Artificial Neural Networks (LSTM)," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 38(3), pages 847-873, September.
    20. Porshakov, A. & Ponomarenko, A. & Sinyakov, A., 2016. "Nowcasting and Short-Term Forecasting of Russian GDP with a Dynamic Factor Model," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 60-76.
    21. Мекенбаева Камила // Mekenbayeva Kamila & Karel Musil, 2017. "Система прогнозирования в Национальном Банке Казахстана: наукаст на основа опросов // Forecasting system at the National Bank of Kazakhstan: survey-based nowcasting," Working Papers #2017-1, National Bank of Kazakhstan.
    22. Urasawa, Satoshi, 2014. "Real-time GDP forecasting for Japan: A dynamic factor model approach," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 116-134.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    WP; real GDP;

    JEL classification:

    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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