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Using Newspapers for Tracking the Business Cycle

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Abstract

On the basis of keyword searches in newspaper articles several versions of the Recession-word Index (RWI) are constructed for Germany and Switzerland. We use these indices in order to track the business cycle dynamics in these two countries. Our main findings are the following. First, we show that augmenting benchmark autoregressive models with the RWI generally leads to improvement in accuracy of one-step ahead forecasts of GDP growth compared to those obtained by the benchmark model. Second, the accuracy of out-of-sample forecasts obtained with models augmented with the RWI is comparable to that of models augmented with established economic indicators in both countries, such as the Ifo Business Climate Index and the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany, and the KOF Economic Barometer and the Purchasing Managers Index in manufacturing for Switzerland. Third, we show that the RWI-based forecasts are more accurate than the consensus forecasts (published by Consensus Economics Inc.) for Switzerland, whereas we reach the opposite conclusion for Germany. In fact, the accuracy of the consensus forecasts of GDP growth for Germany appears to be superior to that of any other indicator considered in our study. These results are robust to changes in estimation/forecast samples, the use of rolling vs expanding estimation windows, and the inclusion of a web-based recession indicator extracted from Google Trends into a set of the competing models.

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  • David Iselin & Boriss Siliverstovs, 2013. "Using Newspapers for Tracking the Business Cycle," KOF Working papers 13-337, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
  • Handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:13-337
    DOI: 10.3929/ethz-a-009899599
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    Cited by:

    1. Steffen Henzel & Sebastian Rast, 2013. "Forecasting Properties of Indicators for Predicting GDP Growth in Germany," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 66(17), pages 39-46, September.
    2. Steffen Nauhaus & Johannes Luger & Sebastian Raisch, 2021. "Strategic Decision Making in the Digital Age: Expert Sentiment and Corporate Capital Allocation," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(7), pages 1933-1961, November.
    3. Dirk Ulbricht & Konstantin A. Kholodilin & Tobias Thomas, 2017. "Do Media Data Help to Predict German Industrial Production?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(5), pages 483-496, August.
    4. Christian Seiler & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2013. "The Ifo Business Climate and the German Economy," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 66(18), pages 17-21, October.
    5. Wolfgang Nierhaus & Timo Wollmershäuser, 2016. "ifo Konjunkturumfragen und Konjunkturanalyse: Band II," ifo Forschungsberichte, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 72.
    6. David Iselin & Boriss Siliverstovs, 2013. "Mit Zeitungen Konjunkturprognosen erstellen: Eine Vergleichsstudie für die Schweiz und Deutschland," KOF Analysen, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich, vol. 7(3), pages 104-117, September.
    7. Ulrich Heilemann & Susanne Schnorr-Bäcker, 2016. "Could The Start Of The German Recession 2008-2009 Have Been Foreseen? Evidence From Real-Time Data," Working Papers 2016-003, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.

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