Measuring Real Activity Using a Weekly Economic Index

Daniel Lewis, Karel Mertens and James Stock

No 2011, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Abstract: This paper describes a weekly economic index (WEI) developed to track the rapid economic developments associated with the onset of and policy response to the novel coronavirus in the United States. The WEI is a weekly composite index of real economic activity, with eight of 10 series available the Thursday after the end of the reference week. In addition to being a weekly real activity index, the WEI has strong predictive power for output measures and provided an accurate nowcast of current-quarter GDP growth in the first half of 2020, with weaker performance in the second half. We document how the WEI responded to key events and data releases during the first 10 months of the pandemic.

Keywords: Weekly Economic Index; High Frequency; Measurement of Economic Activity; Forecasting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 E01 E66 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2020-04-17, Revised 2021-03-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-ore
Note: A previous version of this paper was titled "U.S. Economic Activity During the Early Weeks of the SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak."
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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Journal Article: Measuring real activity using a weekly economic index (2022)
Working Paper: Measuring Real Activity Using a Weekly Economic Index (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:feddwp:87839

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DOI: 10.24149/wp2011r1

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