IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc15/112830.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Foreign PMIs: A reliable indicator for Swiss exports

Author

Listed:
  • Hanslin Grossmann, Sandra
  • Scheufele, Rolf

Abstract

Foreign economic activity is a major determinant of export development. This paper presents an indicator for now- and forecasting exports, which is based on survey data that captures foreign economic performance. We construct an indicator by weighting foreign PMIs of Switzerland's main trading partners with their export shares and compare its forecasting performance with alternative indicators. The paper shows that the indicator based on foreign PMIs is strongly correlated with exports (total as well as goods exports). In an out-of-sample forecast comparison we employ standard ARDL models as well as MIDAS models to forecast different definitions of exports. We document that our export indicator outperforms many other previously used indicators for forecasting exports and an univariate benchmark. As manufacturing is an important pillar of the Swiss economy and is highly export intensive, improving export forecasts is also beneficial for forecasting Swiss GDP.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanslin Grossmann, Sandra & Scheufele, Rolf, 2015. "Foreign PMIs: A reliable indicator for Swiss exports," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112830, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112830
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/112830/1/VfS_2015_pid_536.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Lehmann, 2021. "Forecasting exports across Europe: What are the superior survey indicators?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(5), pages 2429-2453, May.
    2. Lahiri, Kajal & Monokroussos, George, 2013. "Nowcasting US GDP: The role of ISM business surveys," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 644-658.
    3. António Rua & Paulo Esteves, 2012. "Short-term forecasting for the portuguese economy: a methodological overview," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    4. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2006. "A comparison of direct and iterated multistep AR methods for forecasting macroeconomic time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1-2), pages 499-526.
    5. Nils Jannsen & Julia Richter, 2012. "Kapazitätsauslastung im Ausland als Indikator für die deutschen Investitionsgüterexporte," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 92(12), pages 833-837, December.
    6. 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.
    7. Michael P. Clements & Ana Beatriz Galvao, 2009. "Forecasting US output growth using leading indicators: an appraisal using MIDAS models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(7), pages 1187-1206.
    8. Ca' Zorzi, Michele & Schnatz, Bernd, 2007. "Explaining and forecasting euro area exports: which competitiveness indicator performs best?," Working Paper Series 833, European Central Bank.
    9. Katja Heinisch & Rolf Scheufele, 2018. "Bottom-up or direct? Forecasting German GDP in a data-rich environment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 705-745, March.
    10. Christian Grimme & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2014. "Die ifo Exporterwartungen – ein neuer Indikator zur Lage der Exportindustrie in Deutschland," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 67(23), pages 64-65, December.
    11. Ghysels, Eric & Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2004. "The MIDAS Touch: Mixed Data Sampling Regression Models," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt9mf223rs, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    12. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 2002. "Macroeconomic Forecasting Using Diffusion Indexes," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(2), pages 147-162, April.
    13. Steffen Elstner & Christian Grimme & Ulrich Haskamp, 2013. "Das ifo Exportklima – ein Frühindikator für die deutsche Exportprognose," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 66(04), pages 36-43, March.
    14. Baghestani, Hamid, 1994. "Evaluating multiperiod survey forecasts of real net exports," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 267-272.
    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. Robert Lehmann, 2016. "Economic Growth and Business Cycle Forecasting at the Regional Level," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 65.
    2. Robert Lehmann, 2021. "Forecasting exports across Europe: What are the superior survey indicators?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(5), pages 2429-2453, May.
    3. Radoslaw Sobko & Maria Klonowska-Matynia, 2021. "The Relationship between the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) and Economic Growth: The Case for Poland," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 1), pages 198-219.

    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. Sandra Hanslin Grossmann & Rolf Scheufele, 2016. "Foreign PMIs: A reliable indicator for exports?," Working Papers 2016-01, Swiss National Bank.
    2. Robert Lehmann, 2016. "Economic Growth and Business Cycle Forecasting at the Regional Level," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 65.
    3. Hwee Kwan Chow & Yijie Fei & Daniel Han, 2023. "Forecasting GDP with many predictors in a small open economy: forecast or information pooling?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 805-829, August.
    4. Alain Galli & Christian Hepenstrick & Rolf Scheufele, 2019. "Mixed-Frequency Models for Tracking Short-Term Economic Developments in Switzerland," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 15(2), pages 151-178, June.
    5. Chudik, Alexander & Grossman, Valerie & Pesaran, M. Hashem, 2016. "A multi-country approach to forecasting output growth using PMIs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 192(2), pages 349-365.
    6. Ballarin, Giovanni & Dellaportas, Petros & Grigoryeva, Lyudmila & Hirt, Marcel & van Huellen, Sophie & Ortega, Juan-Pablo, 2024. "Reservoir computing for macroeconomic forecasting with mixed-frequency data," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 1206-1237.
    7. Robert Lehmann, 2021. "Forecasting exports across Europe: What are the superior survey indicators?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(5), pages 2429-2453, May.
    8. 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.
    9. Kenichiro McAlinn, 2021. "Mixed‐frequency Bayesian predictive synthesis for economic nowcasting," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1143-1163, November.
    10. Katja Heinisch & Rolf Scheufele, 2018. "Bottom-up or direct? Forecasting German GDP in a data-rich environment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 705-745, March.
    11. 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.
    12. Mogliani, Matteo & Darné, Olivier & Pluyaud, Bertrand, 2017. "The new MIBA model: Real-time nowcasting of French GDP using the Banque de France's monthly business survey," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 26-39.
    13. Wolfgang Nierhaus & Timo Wollmershäuser, 2016. "ifo Konjunkturumfragen und Konjunkturanalyse: Band II," ifo Forschungsberichte, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 72, July.
    14. Kaufmann, Daniel & Scheufele, Rolf, 2017. "Business tendency surveys and macroeconomic fluctuations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 878-893.
    15. Schumacher, Christian, 2016. "A comparison of MIDAS and bridge equations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 257-270.
    16. Götz, Thomas B. & Hecq, Alain & Urbain, Jean-Pierre, 2016. "Combining forecasts from successive data vintages: An application to U.S. growth," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 61-74.
    17. Boriss Siliverstovs, 2017. "Short-term forecasting with mixed-frequency data: a MIDASSO approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(13), pages 1326-1343, March.
    18. Duarte, Cláudia & Rodrigues, Paulo M.M. & Rua, António, 2017. "A mixed frequency approach to the forecasting of private consumption with ATM/POS data," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 61-75.
    19. Bahar Şen Doğan & Murat Midiliç, 2019. "Forecasting Turkish real GDP growth in a data-rich environment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 367-395, January.
    20. Konstantin Kuck & Karsten Schweikert, 2021. "Forecasting Baden‐Württemberg's GDP growth: MIDAS regressions versus dynamic mixed‐frequency factor models," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(5), pages 861-882, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F17 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Forecasting and Simulation
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

    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:zbw:vfsc15:112830. 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/vfsocea.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.