IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2011-098.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Real-time Forecasts of Economic Activity for Latin American Economies

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Philip Liu
  • Rafael Romeu
  • Mr. Troy D Matheson

Abstract

Macroeconomic policy decisions in real-time are based the assessment of current and future economic conditions. These assessments are made difficult by the presence of incomplete and noisy data. The problem is more acute for emerging market economies, where most economic data are released infrequently with a (sometimes substantial) lag. This paper evaluates "nowcasts" and forecasts of real GDP growth using five alternative models for ten Latin American countries. The results indicate that the flow of monthly data helps to improve forecast accuracy, and the dynamic factor model consistently produces more accurate nowcasts and forecasts relative to other model specifications, across most of the countries we consider.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Philip Liu & Rafael Romeu & Mr. Troy D Matheson, 2011. "Real-time Forecasts of Economic Activity for Latin American Economies," IMF Working Papers 2011/098, International Monetary Fund.
  • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2011/098
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=24819
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giannone, Domenico & Reichlin, Lucrezia & Small, David, 2008. "Nowcasting: The real-time informational content of macroeconomic data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 665-676, May.
    2. Doz, Catherine & Giannone, Domenico & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2011. "A two-step estimator for large approximate dynamic factor models based on Kalman filtering," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 164(1), pages 188-205, September.
    3. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2002. "Determining the Number of Factors in Approximate Factor Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 191-221, January.
    4. Catherine Doz & Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2012. "A Quasi–Maximum Likelihood Approach for Large, Approximate Dynamic Factor Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(4), pages 1014-1024, November.
    5. K. Barhoumi & S. Benk & R. Cristadoro & A. Den Reijer & A. Jakaitiene & P. Jelonek & A. Rua & K. Ruth & C. Van Nieuwenhuyze & G. Rünstler, 2008. "Short-term forecasting of GDP using large monthly datasets – A pseudo real-time forecast evaluation exercise," Working Paper Research 133, National Bank of Belgium.
    6. Matheson, Troy D., 2010. "An analysis of the informational content of New Zealand data releases: The importance of business opinion surveys," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 304-314, January.
    7. Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin & Luca Sala, 2005. "Monetary Policy in Real Time," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2004, Volume 19, pages 161-224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Sims, Christopher A & Zha, Tao, 1998. "Bayesian Methods for Dynamic Multivariate Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 949-968, November.
    9. Litterman, Robert B, 1986. "Forecasting with Bayesian Vector Autoregressions-Five Years of Experience," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 4(1), pages 25-38, January.
    10. Bai, Jushan & Ng, Serena, 2007. "Determining the Number of Primitive Shocks in Factor Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 52-60, January.
    11. Eklund, Jana & Kapetanios, George, 2008. "A review of forecasting techniques for large datasets," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 203, pages 109-115, January.
    12. Eklund, Jana & Kapetanios, George, 2008. "A review of forecasting techniques for large datasets," National Institute Economic Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 203, pages 109-115, January.
    13. Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin & David Small, 2008. "Nowcasting: the real time informational content of macroeconomic data releases," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/6409, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    14. Litterman, Robert, 1986. "Forecasting with Bayesian vector autoregressions -- Five years of experience : Robert B. Litterman, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 4 (1986) 25-38," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 497-498.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Helena Rodríguez, 2014. "Un indicador de la evolución del PIB uruguayo en tiempo real," Documentos de trabajo 2014009, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    2. Niu, Linlin & Xu, Xiu & Chen, Ying, 2017. "An adaptive approach to forecasting three key macroeconomic variables for transitional China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 201-213.
    3. Matteo Luciani & Madhavi Pundit & Arief Ramayandi & Giovanni Veronese, 2018. "Nowcasting Indonesia," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 597-619, September.
    4. Tóth, Peter, 2014. "Malý dynamický faktorový model na krátkodobé prognózovanie slovenského HDP [A Small Dynamic Factor Model for the Short-Term Forecasting of Slovak GDP]," MPRA Paper 63713, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Dahlhaus, Tatjana & Guénette, Justin-Damien & Vasishtha, Garima, 2017. "Nowcasting BRIC+M in real time," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 915-935.
    6. Abel Rodríguez Tirado & Marcelo Delajara & Federico Hernández Álvarez, 2016. "Nowcasting Mexico’s Short-Term GDP Growth in Real-Time: A Factor Model versus Professional Forecasters," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2016), pages 167-182, October.
    7. Soybilgen, Barış & Yazgan, Ege, 2018. "Evaluating nowcasts of bridge equations with advanced combination schemes for the Turkish unemployment rate," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 99-108.
    8. Christian Glocker & Serguei Kaniovski, 2022. "Macroeconometric forecasting using a cluster of dynamic factor models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 43-91, July.
    9. Oguzhan Cepni & I. Ethem Guney & Norman R. Swanson, 2020. "Forecasting and nowcasting emerging market GDP growth rates: The role of latent global economic policy uncertainty and macroeconomic data surprise factors," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(1), pages 18-36, January.
    10. Germán López, 2015. "Forecast Accuracy of Small and Large Scale Dynamic Factor Models in Developing Economies," Working Papers. Serie AD 2015-03, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    11. Jiang, Yu & Guo, Yongji & Zhang, Yihao, 2017. "Forecasting China's GDP growth using dynamic factors and mixed-frequency data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 132-138.
    12. Daniel Baquero & Manuel Gonzalez-Astudillo, 2018. "A Nowcasting Model for the Growth Rate of Real GDP of Ecuador : Implementing a Time-Varying Intercept," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-044, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Evžen Kočenda & Karen Poghosyan, 2020. "Nowcasting Real GDP Growth: Comparison between Old and New EU Countries," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(3), pages 197-220, May.
    14. Rudrani Bhattacharya & Parma Chakravartti & Sudipto Mundle, 2019. "Forecasting India’s economic growth: a time-varying parameter regression approach," Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 205-228, September.
    15. Siliverstovs, Boriss, 2017. "Dissecting models' forecasting performance," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 294-299.
    16. Biswas, Rita & Loungani, Prakash & Liang, Zhongwen & Michaelides, Michael, 2024. "Linkages between financial and macroeconomic indicators in emerging markets and developing economies," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    17. Rusnák, Marek, 2016. "Nowcasting Czech GDP in real time," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 26-39.
    18. Marcos Dal Bianco & Jaime Martinez-Martín & Maximo Camacho, 2013. "Short-Run Forecasting of Argentine GDP Growth," Working Papers 1314, BBVA Bank, Economic Research Department.
    19. Golinelli, Roberto & Parigi, Giuseppe, 2014. "Tracking world trade and GDP in real time," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 847-862.
    20. Marius Cristian Acatrinei, 2020. "Financial stability indicator for non-banking markets," Journal of Financial Studies, Institute of Financial Studies, vol. 9(5), pages 3-9, November.
    21. Caruso, Alberto, 2018. "Nowcasting with the help of foreign indicators: The case of Mexico," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 160-168.
    22. Shikha Gupta & Nand Kumar, 2023. "Time varying dynamics of globalization effect in India," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 22(1), pages 81-97, January.
    23. Alberto Caruso, 2015. "Nowcasting Mexican GDP," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2015-40, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    24. González-Astudillo, Manuel & Baquero, Daniel, 2019. "A nowcasting model for Ecuador: Implementing a time-varying mean output growth," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 250-263.
    25. Dwita Sakuntala & M. Shabri Abd. Majid & Aliasuddin Aliasuddin & Suriani Suriani, 2022. "Causality between Green Stock Market with Monetary Policy, Global Uncertainty, and Environmental Damage in Indonesia," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 12(6), pages 215-223, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Troy D. Matheson, 2014. "New indicators for tracking growth in real time," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2013(2), pages 51-71.
    2. Poncela, Pilar & Ruiz, Esther & Miranda, Karen, 2021. "Factor extraction using Kalman filter and smoothing: This is not just another survey," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1399-1425.
    3. Banbura, Marta & Rünstler, Gerhard, 2011. "A look into the factor model black box: Publication lags and the role of hard and soft data in forecasting GDP," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 333-346, April.
    4. Doz, Catherine & Giannone, Domenico & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2011. "A two-step estimator for large approximate dynamic factor models based on Kalman filtering," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 164(1), pages 188-205, September.
    5. Bragoli, Daniela & Modugno, Michele, 2017. "A now-casting model for Canada: Do U.S. variables matter?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 786-800.
    6. K. Barhoumi & S. Benk & R. Cristadoro & A. Den Reijer & A. Jakaitiene & P. Jelonek & A. Rua & K. Ruth & C. Van Nieuwenhuyze & G. Rünstler, 2008. "Short-term forecasting of GDP using large monthly datasets – A pseudo real-time forecast evaluation exercise," Working Paper Research 133, National Bank of Belgium.
    7. Stock, J.H. & Watson, M.W., 2016. "Dynamic Factor Models, Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressions, and Structural Vector Autoregressions in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 415-525, Elsevier.
    8. Kaufmann, Daniel & Scheufele, Rolf, 2017. "Business tendency surveys and macroeconomic fluctuations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 878-893.
    9. 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.
    10. Kuzin, Vladimir N. & Marcellino, Massimiliano & Schumacher, Christian, 2009. "Pooling versus model selection for nowcasting with many predictors: an application to German GDP," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2009,03, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    11. Germán López, 2015. "Forecast Accuracy of Small and Large Scale Dynamic Factor Models in Developing Economies," Working Papers. Serie AD 2015-03, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    12. Matheson, Troy D., 2010. "An analysis of the informational content of New Zealand data releases: The importance of business opinion surveys," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 304-314, January.
    13. Massimiliano Marcellino & Christian Schumacher, 2010. "Factor MIDAS for Nowcasting and Forecasting with Ragged‐Edge Data: A Model Comparison for German GDP," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(4), pages 518-550, August.
    14. Karim Barhoumi & Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2010. "Are disaggregate data useful for factor analysis in forecasting French GDP?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1-2), pages 132-144.
    15. Katerina Arnostova & David Havrlant & Luboš Rùžièka & Peter Tóth, 2011. "Short-Term Forecasting of Czech Quarterly GDP Using Monthly Indicators," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 61(6), pages 566-583, December.
    16. 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.
    17. Catherine Doz & Peter Fuleky, 2019. "Dynamic Factor Models," Working Papers 2019-4, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
    18. William A. Barnett & Biyan Tang, 2016. "Chinese Divisia Monetary Index and GDP Nowcasting," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 27(5), pages 825-849, November.
    19. Antipa, Pamfili & Barhoumi, Karim & Brunhes-Lesage, Véronique & Darné, Olivier, 2012. "Nowcasting German GDP: A comparison of bridge and factor models," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 864-878.
    20. Modugno, Michele & Soybilgen, Barış & Yazgan, Ege, 2016. "Nowcasting Turkish GDP and news decomposition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1369-1384.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WP;

    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

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2011/098. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.