Nowcasting aggregate services trade

The increasing importance of services trade in the global economy contrasts with the lack of timely data to monitor recent developments. The nowcasting models developed in this paper are aimed at providing insights into current changes in total services trade, as recorded in monthly statistics of th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jaax, Alexander
Other Authors: Gonzales, Frédéric, Mourougane, Annabelle
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Paris OECD Publishing 2021
Series:OECD Trade Policy Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: OECD Books and Papers - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:The increasing importance of services trade in the global economy contrasts with the lack of timely data to monitor recent developments. The nowcasting models developed in this paper are aimed at providing insights into current changes in total services trade, as recorded in monthly statistics of the G7 countries. Combining machine-learning techniques and dynamic factor models, the methodology exploits traditional data and Google Trends search data. No single model outperforms the others, but a weighted average of the best models combining machine-learning with dynamic factor models seems to be a promising avenue. The best models improve one-step ahead predictive performance relative to a simple benchmark by 30-35% on average across G7 countries and trade flows. Nowcasting models are estimated to have captured about 67% of the fall in services exports due to the COVID-19 shock and 60% of the fall in imports on average across G7 economies
Physical Description:55 p