Nowcasting Belgium

David de Antonio Liedo

No 256, Working Paper Research from National Bank of Belgium

Abstract: This paper proposes a method that takes into account the calendar of European and Belgian intraquarterly data releases to automatically update GDP growth expectations or nowcasts in realtime. The role of surveys is well known in the nowcasting literature, but this is the first paper that has attempted to isolate quality from timeliness as independent properties that can be expressed in function of the model parameters. The modeling framework allows for the incorporation of different kinds of survey data directly in levels and features a parsimonious specification of the GDP revision process which does not impose strict assumptions regarding the rationality of the statistical agency. The results in the empirical section emphasize the quality of survey data, which allows the model to produce accurate real GDP growth nowcasts for Belgium three months prior to the publication of the official flash estimate.

Keywords: news; dynamic factor models; EM algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 C53 E37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2014-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201404-256

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