IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/25778.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring Global Economic Activity

Author

Listed:
  • James D. Hamilton

Abstract

A number of economic studies have used a proxy for world real economic activity derived from shipping costs. This measure turns out to depend on a normalization that has substantive consequences of which users of the index had been unaware prior to this paper. This paper further evaluates this and alternative measures in terms of treatment of trends, coherence with world output, and ability to predict commodity prices. I conclude that measures derived from world industrial production offer a better indicator of global real economic activity.

Suggested Citation

  • James D. Hamilton, 2019. "Measuring Global Economic Activity," NBER Working Papers 25778, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25778
    Note: EEE EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w25778.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christiane Baumeister & Gert Peersman, 2013. "The Role Of Time‐Varying Price Elasticities In Accounting For Volatility Changes In The Crude Oil Market," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 1087-1109, November.
    2. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    3. Juan Antolín-Díaz & Juan F. Rubio-Ramírez, 2018. "Narrative Sign Restrictions for SVARs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(10), pages 2802-2829, October.
    4. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2018. "Modeling fluctuations in the global demand for commodities," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 54-78.
    5. Stavros Degiannakis, George Filis, and Renatas Kizys, 2014. "The Effects of Oil Price Shocks on Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from European Data," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    6. Payton Odom, 2010. "Shipping Indexes Signal Global Economic Trends," Annual Report, Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, pages 28-35.
    7. Lutz Kilian, 2009. "Not All Oil Price Shocks Are Alike: Disentangling Demand and Supply Shocks in the Crude Oil Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1053-1069, June.
    8. Alessio Anzuini & Patrizio Pagano & Massimiliano Pisani, 2015. "Macroeconomic Effects of Precautionary Demand for Oil," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 968-986, September.
    9. ElFayoumi, Khalid, 2018. "The balance sheet effects of oil market shocks: An industry level analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 112-127.
    10. Luciana Juvenal & Ivan Petrella, 2015. "Speculation in the Oil Market," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 621-649, June.
    11. Christiane Baumeister & James D. Hamilton, 2019. "Structural Interpretation of Vector Autoregressions with Incomplete Identification: Revisiting the Role of Oil Supply and Demand Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(5), pages 1873-1910, May.
    12. James D. Hamilton, 2018. "Why You Should Never Use the Hodrick-Prescott Filter," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(5), pages 831-843, December.
    13. Helmut Lütkepohl & Aleksei NetŠunajev, 2014. "Disentangling Demand And Supply Shocks In The Crude Oil Market: How To Check Sign Restrictions In Structural Vars," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 479-496, April.
    14. McPhail, Lihong Lu, 2011. "Assessing the impact of US ethanol on fossil fuel markets: A structural VAR approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1177-1185.
    15. Valery Charnavoki & Juan J. Dolado, 2014. "The Effects of Global Shocks on Small Commodity-Exporting Economies: Lessons from Canada," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 207-237, April.
    16. Lutz Kilian & Daniel P. Murphy, 2014. "The Role Of Inventories And Speculative Trading In The Global Market For Crude Oil," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 454-478, April.
    17. Diaz, Elena Maria & de Gracia, Fernando Perez, 2017. "Oil price shocks and stock returns of oil and gas corporations," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 75-80.
    18. Gargano, Antonio & Timmermann, Allan, 2014. "Forecasting commodity price indexes using macroeconomic and financial predictors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 825-843.
    19. Kang, Wensheng & Perez de Gracia, Fernando & Ratti, Ronald A., 2017. "Oil price shocks, policy uncertainty, and stock returns of oil and gas corporations," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 344-359.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. James D. Hamilton, 2021. "Measuring global economic activity," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(3), pages 293-303, April.
    2. Nooman Rebei & Rashid Sbia, 2021. "Transitory and permanent shocks in the global market for crude oil," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(7), pages 1047-1064, November.
    3. Kilian, Lutz, 2022. "Facts and fiction in oil market modeling," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    4. Daniele Valenti, 2018. "Modelling the Global Price of Oil: Is there any Role for the Oil Futures-spot Spread?," Working Papers 2018.06, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    5. Valenti, Daniele & Bastianin, Andrea & Manera, Matteo, 2023. "A weekly structural VAR model of the US crude oil market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    6. Dominik Bertsche, 2019. "The effects of oil supply shocks on the macroeconomy: a Proxy-FAVAR approachThe effects of oil supply shocks on the macroeconomy: a Proxy-FAVAR approach," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2019-06, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    7. Maghyereh, Aktham & Abdoh, Hussein, 2021. "The effect of structural oil shocks on bank systemic risk in the GCC countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    8. Raghavan, Mala, 2020. "An analysis of the global oil market using SVARMA models," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    9. Valenti, Daniele & Manera, Matteo & Sbuelz, Alessandro, 2020. "Interpreting the oil risk premium: Do oil price shocks matter?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    10. Simona Delle Chiaie & Laurent Ferrara & Domenico Giannone, 2022. "Common factors of commodity prices," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(3), pages 461-476, April.
    11. Kang, Wensheng & Ratti, Ronald A. & Vespignani, Joaquin L., 2017. "Oil price shocks and policy uncertainty: New evidence on the effects of US and non-US oil production," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 536-546.
    12. Rehman, Mobeen Ur, 2018. "Do oil shocks predict economic policy uncertainty?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 498(C), pages 123-136.
    13. Jamie L. Cross & Bao H. Nguyen & Trung Duc Tran, 2022. "The role of precautionary and speculative demand in the global market for crude oil," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(5), pages 882-895, August.
    14. Baumeister, Christiane & Hamilton, James D., 2021. "Reprint: Drawing conclusions from structural vector autoregressions identified on the basis of sign restrictions," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    15. Baumeister, Christiane & Hamilton, James D., 2020. "Drawing conclusions from structural vector autoregressions identified on the basis of sign restrictions," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    16. Lang, Korbinian & Auer, Benjamin R., 2020. "The economic and financial properties of crude oil: A review," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    17. Gong, Xiao-Li & Liu, Jian-Min & Xiong, Xiong & Zhang, Wei, 2021. "The dynamic effects of international oil price shocks on economic fluctuation," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    18. Caldara, Dario & Cavallo, Michele & Iacoviello, Matteo, 2019. "Oil price elasticities and oil price fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-20.
    19. Dalheimer, Bernhard & Herwartz, Helmut & Lange, Alexander, 2021. "The threat of oil market turmoils to food price stability in Sub-Saharan Africa," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • Q02 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Commodity Market

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:25778. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.