Nowcasting Unemployment Rate in Turkey: Let's Ask Google

Meltem Chadwick and Gonul Sengul

Working Papers from Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey

Abstract: We use linear regression models and Bayesian Model Averaging procedure to investigate whether Google search query data can improve the nowcast performance of the monthly nonagricultural unemployment rate for Turkey for the period from January 2005 to January 2012. We show that Google search query data is successful at nowcasting1 monthly nonagricultural unemployment rate for Turkey both in-sample and out-of-sample. When compared with a benchmark model, where we use only the lag values of the monthly unemployment rate, the best model contains Google search query data and it is 47.8 percent more accurate in-sample and 38.3 percent more accurate for the one month ahead nowcasts in terms of relative root mean square errors (RMSE). We also show via Harvey, Leybourne, and Newbold (1997) modification of the Diebold-Mariano test that models with Google search query data indeed perform statistically better than the benchmark.

Keywords: Google Insights; nowcasting; nonagricultural unemployment rate; Bayesian model averaging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 C53 E27 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-for and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.tcmb.gov.tr/wps/wcm/connect/EN/TCMB+EN ... g+Paperss/2012/12-18 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Nowcasting the Unemployment Rate in Turkey: Let's ask Google (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tcb:wpaper:1218

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sermet Pekin () and Ilker Cakar () and ().