IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc15/112830.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Foreign PMIs: A reliable indicator for Swiss exports

Author

Listed:
  • Hanslin Grossmann, Sandra
  • Scheufele, Rolf

Abstract

Foreign economic activity is a major determinant of export development. This paper presents an indicator for now- and forecasting exports, which is based on survey data that captures foreign economic performance. We construct an indicator by weighting foreign PMIs of Switzerland's main trading partners with their export shares and compare its forecasting performance with alternative indicators. The paper shows that the indicator based on foreign PMIs is strongly correlated with exports (total as well as goods exports). In an out-of-sample forecast comparison we employ standard ARDL models as well as MIDAS models to forecast different definitions of exports. We document that our export indicator outperforms many other previously used indicators for forecasting exports and an univariate benchmark. As manufacturing is an important pillar of the Swiss economy and is highly export intensive, improving export forecasts is also beneficial for forecasting Swiss GDP.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanslin Grossmann, Sandra & Scheufele, Rolf, 2015. "Foreign PMIs: A reliable indicator for Swiss exports," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112830, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112830
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/112830/1/VfS_2015_pid_536.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Lehmann, 2015. "Survey-based indicators vs. hard data: What improves export forecasts in Europe?," ifo Working Paper Series 196, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    2. Lahiri, Kajal & Monokroussos, George, 2013. "Nowcasting US GDP: The role of ISM business surveys," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 644-658.
    3. António Rua & Paulo Esteves, 2012. "Short-term forecasting for the portuguese economy: a methodological overview," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    4. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2006. "A comparison of direct and iterated multistep AR methods for forecasting macroeconomic time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1-2), pages 499-526.
    5. Nils Jannsen & Julia Richter, 2012. "Kapazitätsauslastung im Ausland als Indikator für die deutschen Investitionsgüterexporte," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 92(12), pages 833-837, December.
    6. Michael P. Clements & Ana Beatriz Galvao, 2009. "Forecasting US output growth using leading indicators: an appraisal using MIDAS models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(7), pages 1187-1206.
    7. 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.
    8. Christian Grimme & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2014. "Die ifo Exporterwartungen – ein neuer Indikator zur Lage der Exportindustrie in Deutschland," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 67(23), pages 64-65, December.
    9. Steffen Elstner & Christian Grimme & Ulrich Haskamp, 2013. "Das ifo Exportklima – ein Frühindikator für die deutsche Exportprognose," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 66(04), pages 36-43, March.
    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. Robert Lehmann, 2016. "Wirtschaftswachstum und Konjunkturprognosen auf regionaler Ebene," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 65.
    2. Robert Lehmann, 2015. "Survey-based indicators vs. hard data: What improves export forecasts in Europe?," ERSA conference papers ersa15p756, European Regional Science Association.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F17 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Forecasting and Simulation
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

    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:zbw:vfsc15:112830. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.