Can Google searches help nowcast and forecast unemployment rates in the Visegrad Group countries?

Jaroslav Pavlicek () and Ladislav Krištoufek ()

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Online activity of the Internet users has been repeatedly shown to provide a rich information set for various research fields. We focus on the job-related searches on Google and their possible usefulness in the region of the Visegrad Group -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Even for rather small economies, the online searches of their inhabitants can be successfully utilized for macroeconomic predictions. Specifically, we study the unemployment rates and their interconnection to the job-related searches. We show that the Google searches strongly enhance both nowcasting and forecasting models of the unemployment rates.

Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for and nep-tra
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in PLoS ONE 10(5): e0127084, 2015

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:1408.6639

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