IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/bubdp1/2020.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Real-time data and business cycle analysis in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Döpke, Jörg

Abstract

This paper examines the consequences of using "real-time" data for business cycle analysis in Germany based on a novel data set covering quarterly real output data from 1968 to 2001. Real-time output gaps are calculated. They differ considerably from their counterparts based on the most recent data. Moreover, they are not rational forecasts of the final series. The consequences of using real-time data for inflation forecasts, the dynamic interaction of output gaps and inflation, and stylised facts of the business cycle are also addressed. The results suggest that revisions of data and estimates can seriously distort research and policy implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Döpke, Jörg, 2004. "Real-time data and business cycle analysis in Germany," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2004,11, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:bubdp1:2020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/19478/1/200411dkp.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Orphanides, Athanasios & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The Reliability of Inflation Forecasts Based on Output Gap Estimates in Real Time," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 583-601, June.
    2. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    3. David E. Runkle, 1998. "Revisionist history: how data revisions distort economic policy research," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 22(Fall), pages 3-12.
    4. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, November.
    5. Croushore, Dean & Stark, Tom, 2001. "A real-time data set for macroeconomists," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 111-130, November.
    6. Knetsch, Thomas A., 2004. "The Inventory Cycle of the German Economy," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2004,09, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    7. Schumacher, Christian, 2002. "Forecasting Trend Output in the Euro Area," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(8), pages 543-558, December.
    8. Alasdair Scott, 2000. "Stylised facts from output gap measures," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2000/07, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    9. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    10. Croushore, Dean & Evans, Charles L., 2006. "Data revisions and the identification of monetary policy shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1135-1160, September.
    11. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    12. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark & Lopez-Salido, J. David, 2001. "European inflation dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1237-1270.
    13. Karen E. Dynan & Douglas W. Elmendorf, 2001. "Do provisional estimates of output miss economic turning points?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-52, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Jens Richard Clausen & Carsten-Patrick Meier, 2005. "Did the Bundesbank Follow a Taylor Rule? An Analysis Based on Real-Time Data," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 141(II), pages 213-246, June.
    15. Stanley Fischer, 1984. "Contracts, Credibility, and Disinflation," NBER Working Papers 1339, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2002. "Robust Monetary Policy Rules with Unknown Natural Rates," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 63-146.
    17. Stark, Tom & Croushore, Dean, 2002. "Forecasting with a real-time data set for macroeconomists," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 507-531, December.
    18. Giordani, Paolo, 2004. "An alternative explanation of the price puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 1271-1296, September.
    19. Glenn Rudebusch & Lars E.O. Svensson, 1999. "Policy Rules for Inflation Targeting," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 203-262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Tom Stark, 2002. "A summary of the conference on real-time data analysis," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Q 1, pages 5-11.
    21. Faust, Jon & Rogers, John H & Wright, Jonathan H, 2005. "News and Noise in G-7 GDP Announcements," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 403-419, June.
    22. Camba-Mendez, Gonzalo & Rodriguez-Palenzuela, Diego, 2003. "Assessment criteria for output gap estimates," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 529-562, May.
    23. Lawrence J. Christiano & Terry J. Fitzgerald, 2003. "The Band Pass Filter," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(2), pages 435-465, May.
    24. Kuttner, Kenneth N, 1994. "Estimating Potential Output as a Latent Variable," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(3), pages 361-368, July.
    25. Marcelle Chauvet & Jeremy M. Piger, 2003. "Identifying business cycle turning points in real time," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 85(Mar), pages 47-61.
    26. Mohr, Matthias, 2001. "Ein disaggregierter Ansatz zur Berechnung konjunkturbereinigter Budgetsalden für Deutschland: Methoden und Ergebnisse," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2001,13, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    27. N. Gregory Mankiw & Matthew D. Shapiro, 1986. "News or Noise? An Analysis of GNP Revisions," NBER Working Papers 1939, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    28. Iris Claus, 2000. "Is the output gap a useful indicator of inflation?," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2000/05, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    29. Dean Croushore & Tom Stark, 2003. "A Real-Time Data Set for Macroeconomists: Does the Data Vintage Matter?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(3), pages 605-617, August.
    30. Francis X. Diebold & Jose A. Lopez, 1995. "Forecast evaluation and combination," Research Paper 9525, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    31. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    32. Rünstler, Gerhard, 2002. "The information content of real-time output gap estimates, an application to the euro area," Working Paper Series 182, European Central Bank.
    33. Athanasios Orphanides, 2002. "Monetary-Policy Rules and the Great Inflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 115-120, May.
    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. Dopke, Jorg & Fritsche, Ulrich, 2006. "When do forecasters disagree? An assessment of German growth and inflation forecast dispersion," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 125-135.
    2. Ince, Onur & Papell, David H., 2013. "The (un)reliability of real-time output gap estimates with revised data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 713-721.
    3. Mohr, Matthias, 2005. "A trend-cycle(-season) filter," Working Paper Series 499, European Central Bank.
    4. Oppenländer Karl Heinrich, 2005. "Hat sich das deutsche Konjunkturmuster geändert? / Is there a Change in the Pattern of German Business Cycle?," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 225(3), pages 118-125, June.
    5. Eleftheriou, Maria, 2009. "Monetary policy in Germany: A cointegration analysis on the relevance of interest rate rules," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 946-960, September.
    6. Cláudia Duarte & Fátima Cardoso, 2009. "Data Revisions: The Case of Portuguese Exports and Imports," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    7. repec:jns:jbstat:v:227:y:2007:i:1:p:87-101 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Parigi, Giuseppe & Golinelli, Roberto, 2005. "Short-Run Italian GDP Forecasting and Real-Time Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 5302, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Beate Schirwitz & Christian Seiler & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2009. "Regionale Konjunkturzyklen in Deutschland – Teil II: Die Zyklendatierung," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 62(14), pages 24-31, July.

    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. Clark, Todd E. & McCracken, Michael W., 2006. "The Predictive Content of the Output Gap for Inflation: Resolving In-Sample and Out-of-Sample Evidence," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(5), pages 1127-1148, August.
    2. Aastveit, Knut Are & Trovik, Tørres, 2014. "Estimating the output gap in real time: A factor model approach," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 180-193.
    3. Ahsan ul Haq Satti & Wasim Shahid Malik, 2017. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 193-219.
    4. Cayen, Jean-Philippe & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The reliability of Canadian output-gap estimates," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 373-393, December.
    5. Dean Croushore, 2011. "Frontiers of Real-Time Data Analysis," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 72-100, March.
    6. Orphanides, Athanasios & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The Reliability of Inflation Forecasts Based on Output Gap Estimates in Real Time," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 583-601, June.
    7. Clark, Todd E. & Kozicki, Sharon, 2005. "Estimating equilibrium real interest rates in real time," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 395-413, December.
    8. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, November.
    9. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2002. "Robust Monetary Policy Rules with Unknown Natural Rates," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 63-146.
    10. de Carvalho, Miguel & Rua, António, 2017. "Real-time nowcasting the US output gap: Singular spectrum analysis at work," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 185-198.
    11. Hilde Bjørnland & Leif Brubakk & Anne Jore, 2008. "Forecasting inflation with an uncertain output gap," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 413-436, November.
    12. Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, Alex, 2008. "Monetary Policy Evaluation in Real Time: Forward-Looking Taylor Rules Without Forward-Looking Data," MPRA Paper 11352, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Frederick H. Wallace & Gary L. Shelley & Luis F. Cabrera Castellanos, 2004. "Pruebas de la neutralidad monetaria a largo plazo: el caso de Nicaragua," Monetaria, CEMLA, vol. 0(4), pages 407-418, octubre-d.
    14. Matthieu LEMOINE & Odile CHAGNY, 2005. "Estimating the potential output of the euro area with a semi-structural multivariate Hodrick-Prescott filter," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 344, Society for Computational Economics.
    15. Carlos A. Medel, 2018. "Forecasting Inflation with the Hybrid New Keynesian Phillips Curve: A Compact-Scale Global VAR Approach," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(3), pages 331-371, July.
    16. Pierdzioch, Christian & Döpke, Jörg & Hartmann, Daniel, 2008. "Forecasting stock market volatility with macroeconomic variables in real time," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 256-276.
    17. Garratt, Anthony & Mitchell, James & Vahey, Shaun P., 2014. "Measuring output gap nowcast uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 268-279.
    18. Sharon Kozicki, 2004. "¿De qué forma afectan las revisiones de datos a la evaluación y conducción de la política monetaria?," Monetaria, CEMLA, vol. 0(4), pages 369-405, octubre-d.
    19. Claudia Arguedas Gonzales, 2004. "Las tasas de interés en moneda nacional y la inflación: una revisión de la Hipótesis de Fisher para Bolivia," Monetaria, CEMLA, vol. 0(4), pages 325-341, octubre-d.
    20. John C. Williams, 2006. "Robust estimation and monetary policy with unobserved structural change," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-16.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Real-time data; business cycles; output gap; VAR; inflation; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

    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:zbw:bubdp1:2020. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dbbgvde.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.