IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boi/wpaper/2019.11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sentiment Indicators Based on a Short Business Tendency Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Roash

    (Central Bureau of Statistics and Bar-Ilan University)

  • Tanya Suhoy

    (Bank of Israel)

Abstract

The monthly frequency of the Business Tendency Survey, launched in 2011, sectoral representativeness, and early availability have created new opportunities for nowcasting. However, Israeli data confirm growing concerns that the aggregate balance of opinions has become less correlated with macroeconomic indicators in the post-crisis period. We test this relationship using firm-level and macro (time-series) data. At the firm-level, logit checks of qualitative evaluations of past domestic sales in the manufacturing, retail trade and services sectors in 2013–17 revealed significant cross-sectional correlations with corresponding revenue data, matched from administrative records; however, comovement between the qualitative evaluations and the aggregate sectoral index was documented only since the questionnaire wording was changed to focus on the specific month, instead of a three-month evaluation. Although this change has amplified seasonal variation in the categorical answers, correlations between qualitative and quantitative data remain (weakly) significant even after seasonal effects are controlled for. We find also that firms' heterogeneity has an effect on the reliability of qualitative evaluations, particularly in the services industry. At the macro level, we are looking for a composite sentiment indicator that aggregates sectoral balances of opinions and tracks real growth at a monthly frequency. We suggest an indicator with time-varying weights, evaluated through Partial Least Squares regression with respect to GDP growth. As GDP is measured quarterly, we simulate intra-quarter GDP-changes from monthly interpolated and bootstrapped seasonally-adjusted GDP-levels. This sentiment indicator performs better than an overall balance of opinions, calculated as a composition of sectoral balances with predefined weights based on industrial GDP-shares. In most (about 85%) simulations the short-term forecasts outperform the benchmark of mean growth. The out-of-sample error is larger when the sentiment indicator forecast is compared to later GDP estimates published by the CBS than with the first estimate.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Roash & Tanya Suhoy, 2019. "Sentiment Indicators Based on a Short Business Tendency Survey," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2019.11, Bank of Israel.
    • Handle: RePEc:boi:wpaper:2019.11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://boiwebrepec.azurefd.net/RePEc/boi/wpaper/WP_2019.11.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2019
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansson, Jesper & Jansson, Per & Lof, Marten, 2005. "Business survey data: Do they help in forecasting GDP growth?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 377-389.
    2. Bergmeir, Christoph & Hyndman, Rob J. & Benítez, José M., 2016. "Bagging exponential smoothing methods using STL decomposition and Box–Cox transformation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 303-312.
    3. Banbura, Marta & Rünstler, Gerhard, 2011. "A look into the factor model black box: Publication lags and the role of hard and soft data in forecasting GDP," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 333-346, April.
    4. Cecilia Frale & Massimiliano Marcellino & Gian Luigi Mazzi & Tommaso Proietti, 2010. "Survey data as coincident or leading indicators," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1-2), pages 109-131.
    5. Harvey, David I & Leybourne, Stephen J & Newbold, Paul, 1998. "Tests for Forecast Encompassing," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(2), pages 254-259, April.
    6. James Mitchell & Richard J. Smith & Martin R. Weale & Stephen Wright & Eduardo L. Salazar, 2005. "An Indicator of Monthly GDP and an Early Estimate of Quarterly GDP Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(501), pages 108-129, February.
    7. G. Bruno & L. Crosilla & P. Margani, 2019. "Inspecting the Relationship Between Business Confidence and Industrial Production: Evidence on Italian Survey Data," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 15(1), pages 1-24, April.
    8. Mogliani, Matteo & Darné, Olivier & Pluyaud, Bertrand, 2017. "The new MIBA model: Real-time nowcasting of French GDP using the Banque de France's monthly business survey," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 26-39.
    9. Kaufmann, Daniel & Scheufele, Rolf, 2017. "Business tendency surveys and macroeconomic fluctuations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 878-893.
    10. Stefan Mittnik & Peter Zadrozny, 2005. "Forecasting Quarterly German GDP at Monthly Intervals Using Monthly Ifo Business Conditions Data," Contributions to Economics, in: Jan-Egbert Sturm & Timo Wollmershäuser (ed.), Ifo Survey Data in Business Cycle and Monetary Policy Analysis, pages 19-48, Springer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kaufmann, Daniel & Scheufele, Rolf, 2017. "Business tendency surveys and macroeconomic fluctuations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 878-893.
    2. Camila Figueroa S. & Michael Pedersen, 2019. "Extracting information on economic activity from business and consumer surveys in an emerging economy (Chile)," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 22(3), pages 098-131, December.
    3. Oscar Claveria & Enric Monte & Salvador Torra, 2018. "A Data-Driven Approach to Construct Survey-Based Indicators by Means of Evolutionary Algorithms," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 1-14, January.
    4. Claudia Foroni & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2013. "A survey of econometric methods for mixed-frequency data," Economics Working Papers ECO2013/02, European University Institute.
    5. Elena Andreou & Eric Ghysels & Andros Kourtellos, 2013. "Should Macroeconomic Forecasters Use Daily Financial Data and How?," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(2), pages 240-251, April.
    6. Oscar Claveria & Enric Monte & Salvador Torra, 2018. "Tracking economic growth by evolving expectations via genetic programming: A two-step approach," Working Papers XREAP2018-4, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Oct 2018.
    7. Heinisch Katja & Scheufele Rolf, 2019. "Should Forecasters Use Real-Time Data to Evaluate Leading Indicator Models for GDP Prediction? German Evidence," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 20(4), pages 170-200, December.
    8. Oscar Claveria & Enric Monte & Salvador Torra, 2017. "Let the data do the talking: Empirical modelling of survey-based expectations by means of genetic programming," IREA Working Papers 201711, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised May 2017.
    9. Oscar Claveria & Enric Monte & Salvador Torra, 2019. "Evolutionary Computation for Macroeconomic Forecasting," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 53(2), pages 833-849, February.
    10. Dr. Sandra Hanslin Grossmann & Dr. Rolf Scheufele, 2016. "Foreign PMIs: A reliable indicator for exports?," Working Papers 2016-01, Swiss National Bank.
    11. Konstantins Benkovskis, 2008. "Short-Term Forecasts of Latvia's Real Gross Domestic Product Growth Using Monthly Indicators," Working Papers 2008/05, Latvijas Banka.
    12. Libero Monteforte & Valentina Raponi, 2019. "Short‐term forecasts of economic activity: Are fortnightly factors useful?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 207-221, April.
    13. Costantini, Mauro & Pappalardo, Carmine, 2010. "A hierarchical procedure for the combination of forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 725-743, October.
    14. Chrystalleni Aristidou & Kevin Lee & Kalvinder Shields, 2015. "Real-Time Data should be used in Forecasting Output Growth and Recessionary Events in the US," Discussion Papers 2015/13, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    15. Bialowolski, Piotr & Kuszewski, Tomasz & Witkowski, Bartosz, 2015. "Bayesian averaging vs. dynamic factor models for forecasting economic aggregates with tendency survey data," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 9, pages 1-37.
    16. Katja Heinisch & Rolf Scheufele, 2018. "Bottom-up or direct? Forecasting German GDP in a data-rich environment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 705-745, March.
    17. Antipa, Pamfili & Barhoumi, Karim & Brunhes-Lesage, Véronique & Darné, Olivier, 2012. "Nowcasting German GDP: A comparison of bridge and factor models," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 864-878.
    18. Bańbura, Marta & Giannone, Domenico & Modugno, Michele & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2013. "Now-Casting and the Real-Time Data Flow," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 195-237, Elsevier.
    19. Alain Galli & Christian Hepenstrick & Rolf Scheufele, 2019. "Mixed-Frequency Models for Tracking Short-Term Economic Developments in Switzerland," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 15(2), pages 151-178, June.
    20. Barhoumi, K. & Brunhes-Lesage, V. & Darné, O. & Ferrara, L. & Pluyaud, B. & Rouvreau, B., 2008. "Monthly forecasting of French GDP: A revised version of the OPTIM model," Working papers 222, Banque de France.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business tendency survey; Sentiment indicator; Partial Least Squares; monthly GDP;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:boi:wpaper:2019.11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Yossi Yakhin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boigvil.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.