IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocsan/18-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

GDP by Industry in Real Time: Are Revisions Well Behaved?

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Rizzetto

Abstract

The monthly data for real gross domestic product (GDP) by industry are used extensively in real time both to ground the Bank of Canada’s monitoring of economic activity and in the Bank’s nowcasting tools, making these data one of the most important high-frequency time series for Canadian nowcasting. This note documents the series’ real-time properties using the reference period August 2007 to September 2017. It shows that revisions to headline GDP-by-industry growth are generally well behaved; that is, they have a zero mean and low variance and are not revised predictably. Therefore, the signal for overall growth from the first GDP-by-industry release can be received with a good deal of confidence. This analysis suggests, however, that while this result is true on average, there are times when revisions can be important. Two examples discussed are when the economy begins to contract or expand and when end-of-quarter revisions are made. Further, revisions to the industrial sectors are not as well behaved. Revisions to some sectors do not have a zero mean and are generally much larger and more volatile than those for headline growth. In addition, revisions for most sectors exhibit predictability. As a result, the monthly signal from the sector data should be considered more cautiously than should the headline growth series.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Rizzetto, 2018. "GDP by Industry in Real Time: Are Revisions Well Behaved?," Staff Analytical Notes 2018-40, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocsan:18-40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/san2018-40.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. André Binette & Jae Chang, 2013. "CSI: A Model for Tracking Short-Term Growth in Canadian Real GDP," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2013(Summer), pages 3-12.
    2. Jacob A. Mincer & Victor Zarnowitz, 1969. "The Evaluation of Economic Forecasts," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance, pages 3-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Tony Chernis & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2017. "A dynamic factor model for nowcasting Canadian GDP growth," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 217-234, August.
    4. Jacob A. Mincer, 1969. "Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc69-1, October.
    5. Tony Chernis & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2018. "Nowcasting Canadian Economic Activity in an Uncertain Environment," Discussion Papers 18-9, Bank of Canada.
    6. Lamprou, Dimitra, 2016. "Nowcasting GDP in Greece: The impact of data revisions and forecast origin on model selection and performance," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 14(PA), pages 93-102.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tony Chernis & Taylor Webley, 2022. "Nowcasting Canadian GDP with Density Combinations," Discussion Papers 2022-12, Bank of Canada.

    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. Julien Champagne & Guillaume Poulin‐Bellisle & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2020. "Introducing the Bank of Canada staff economic projections database," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(1), pages 114-129, January.
    2. Ericsson, Neil R., 2016. "Eliciting GDP forecasts from the FOMC’s minutes around the financial crisis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 571-583.
    3. Pascal Bührig & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2015. "Revisionen der deutschen Industrieproduktion und die ifo Indikatoren," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 68(21), pages 27-31, November.
    4. Baris Soybilgen & Ege Yazgan, 2017. "An evaluation of inflation expectations in Turkey," Central Bank Review, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, vol. 17(1), pages 1-31–38.
    5. Barbara Rossi, 2013. "Exchange Rate Predictability," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1063-1119, December.
    6. Pericoli, Marcello & Taboga, Marco, 2012. "Bond risk premia, macroeconomic fundamentals and the exchange rate," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 42-65.
    7. Chang, Andrew C. & Hanson, Tyler J., 2016. "The accuracy of forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 23-43.
    8. Magnus Kvåle Helliesen & Håvard Hungnes & Terje Skjerpen, 2022. "Revisions in the Norwegian National Accounts: accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency in preliminary figures," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(3), pages 1079-1121, March.
    9. Tolga Cenesizoglu & Denada Ibrushi, 2020. "Predicting Systematic Risk With Macroeconomic And Financial Variables," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 649-673, August.
    10. Kashyap, Ravi, 2020. "David vs Goliath (You against the Markets), A dynamic programming approach to separate the impact and timing of trading costs," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 545(C).
    11. Haugom, Erik & Langeland, Henrik & Molnár, Peter & Westgaard, Sjur, 2014. "Forecasting volatility of the U.S. oil market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-14.
    12. Bespalova, Olga, 2018. "Forecast Evaluation in Macroeconomics and International Finance. Ph.D. thesis, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA," MPRA Paper 117706, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Isiklar, Gultekin, 2005. "On aggregation bias in fixed-event forecast efficiency tests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 312-316, December.
    14. Christopher Hansman & Harrison Hong & Áureo de Paula & Vishal Singh, 2020. "A Sticky-Price View of Hoarding," NBER Working Papers 27051, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Victor Zarnowitz & Charlotte Boschan & Geoffrey H. Moore & Josephine Su, 1972. "Business Cycle Analysis of Econometric Model Simulations," NBER Chapters, in: Econometric Models of Cyclical Behavior, Volumes 1 and 2, pages 311-541, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Clements, Michael P. & Reade, J. James, 2020. "Forecasting and forecast narratives: The Bank of England Inflation Reports," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1488-1500.
    17. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    18. Fuentes, Julieta & Poncela, Pilar & Rodríguez, Julio, 2014. "Selecting and combining experts from survey forecasts," DES - Working Papers. Statistics and Econometrics. WS ws140905, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Estadística.
    19. Hollstein, Fabian & Prokopczuk, Marcel & Wese Simen, Chardin, 2017. "How to Estimate Beta?," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-617, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    20. Leif Anders Thorsrud, 2016. "Nowcasting using news topics Big Data versus big bank," Working Papers No 6/2016, Centre for Applied Macro- and Petroleum economics (CAMP), BI Norwegian Business School.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business fluctuations and cycles; Central bank research; Econometric and statistical methods;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • C82 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Macroeconomic Data; Data Access
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts

    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:bca:bocsan:18-40. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.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.