OECD Weekly Tracker of Economic Activity

Real time estimates of GDP based on Google Trends and machine learning for OECD and G-20 countries, here. Here’s the current US GDP nowcast:

Technical discussion here. VoxEU post here. Notice that there is an implied decline in January.

It’s interesting to compare the nowcasts coming from “bean counting”  approaches (GDPNow, NY Fed Nowcast, IHS MarkIt nee Macroeconomic Advisers) vs. this big data approach. The levels are calculated by adding on the nowcasted growth rates to latest available GDP estimate.

Figure 1: GDP as reported (black), implied IHS Markit (red), GDPNow (blue), NY Fed (green), OECD Weekly Economic Tracker (orange), all in billions of Ch.2012$, SAAR. Source: BEA, 2020Q3 3rd release, IHS-Markit (1/25), Atlanta Fed (1/21), NY Fed (1/22), OECD weekly economic tracker (as of 1/24), and author’s calculations.

For yet another approach to nowcasting, see this post. Jim Hamilton’s comparison of the Atlanta Fed and NY Fed nowcasting methodologies, here.

Update, 1/29:

Comparing reported (advance release, 1/28/2021) against nowcasts:

Figure 2: GDP as reported in 2020Q4 advance release (black), implied IHS Markit (red), GDPNow (blue), NY Fed (green), OECD Weekly Economic Tracker (orange), all in billions of Ch.2012$, SAAR. Source: BEA, 2020Q4 1st release (1/28/2021), IHS-Markit (1/25), Atlanta Fed (1/21), NY Fed (1/22), OECD weekly economic tracker (as of 1/24), and author’s calculations.

7 thoughts on “OECD Weekly Tracker of Economic Activity

  1. Moses herzog

    They’re very similar yes??? We’re going with an annual rate for GDP. correct?? negative 0.88% is my forecast on the next quarterly announcement

    1. pgl

      Here is something you should be watching. I am. Susan Rice was just given the podium during the daily White House press briefing. She is heading this Administration’s efforts to Advance Racial Equality.

  2. pgl

    This DeLong and the comments have two big messages:

    https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/01/this-really-is-fine.html

    At the end of his post there is a copy of the bizarro garbage ala Parler. One has to read it to appreciate how loony tune some people are.

    Now you will see 16 comments. Early this morning I read a 17th comment which was a vile piece of anti-Semistism. But it seems Brad deleted it without fanfare. So for the Trumpian racists who complain to our hosts here that they monitor their garbage here, just beware that the filters are much tighter on other blogs. So I guess you Trumpian racists should just open Parler accounts.

  3. Willie

    My crude tracking device is counting cranes in and around downtown Seattle. There was a lull in crane activity, meaning that more came down than went up, in the second half of 2020. I have noticed a number of new locations with tower cranes, so the count is heading back up again. We clearly had a slowdown in construction, because the cranes that came down took longer to be replaced. It’s a little too soon to see if the crane count is a blip or if they represent some form of local recovery. Neighborhood businesses that are not hopelessly boutique (popsicle shop for example) seem to be doing reasonably well. Those businesses that were shaky to begin with probably won’t reopen. The rest are either open and even thriving, or have found other ways to do business that will tide them over. There are a few, like bars that relied on live music for a draw, that may have been solid but might be gone. So, economic activity will not be full steam for a while, but I have more hope now than for a while.

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