IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2021-295.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Using the Google Places API and Google Trends Data to Develop High Frequency Indicators of Economic Activity

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Paul A Austin
  • Mr. Marco Marini
  • Alberto Sanchez
  • Chima Simpson-Bell
  • James Tebrake

Abstract

As the pandemic heigthened policymakers’ demand for more frequent and timely indicators to assess economic activities, traditional data collection and compilation methods to produce official indicators are falling short—triggering stronger interest in real time data to provide early signals of turning points in economic activity. In this paper, we examine how data extracted from the Google Places API and Google Trends can be used to develop high frequency indicators aligned to the statistical concepts, classifications, and definitions used in producing official measures. The approach is illustrated by use of Google data-derived indicators that predict well the GDP trajectories of selected countries during the early stage of COVID-19. To this end, we developed a methodological toolkit for national compilers interested in using Google data to enhance the timeliness and frequency of economic indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Paul A Austin & Mr. Marco Marini & Alberto Sanchez & Chima Simpson-Bell & James Tebrake, 2021. "Using the Google Places API and Google Trends Data to Develop High Frequency Indicators of Economic Activity," IMF Working Papers 2021/295, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/295
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=510876
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Alessio Ciarlone, 2023. "Remittances in times of crisis: evidence from Italian corridors," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1402, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    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:2021/295. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.