The Warcast Index: Estimating Economic Activity without Official Data during the Ukraine War in 2022

Mihnea Constantinescu (), Kalle Kappner () and Nikodem Szumilo ()
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Mihnea Constantinescu: National Bank of Ukraine
Kalle Kappner: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Nikodem Szumilo: University College London

No 03/2024, Working Papers from National Bank of Ukraine

Abstract: We introduce the Warcast Index, an approach for estimating regional economic activity during periods of extreme uncertainty using publicly available data. We show that combining widely used correlates of economic activity – nightlight intensity, Google Trends, and Twitter activity – can improve the tracking of economic performance and even allow the approximation of monthly economic activity after extreme structural breaks, like war or occupation. We apply this approach to Ukraine during the 2022 war. Our findings show that combining multiple data sources not only improves tracking accuracy compared to single-correlate models, but also provides timely, transparent and flexible data for policy-making in situations where conventional economic data is unavailable or unreliable. We also contribute to the literature on wartime economics by providing a novel analysis of the economic effects of armed conflict with high frequency (monthly) and spatially granular (regional) data.

Keywords: estimating GDP; nwcasting GDP; wartime economics; nightlights; Google trends; Twitter data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B41 C82 E01 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cis and nep-tra
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