Real-time Forecasts of Economic Activity for Latin American Economies

Author/Editor:

Philip Liu ; Rafael Romeu ; Troy D Matheson

Publication Date:

April 1, 2011

Electronic Access:

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Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary:

Macroeconomic policy decisions in real-time are based the assessment of current and future economic conditions. These assessments are made difficult by the presence of incomplete and noisy data. The problem is more acute for emerging market economies, where most economic data are released infrequently with a (sometimes substantial) lag. This paper evaluates "nowcasts" and forecasts of real GDP growth using five alternative models for ten Latin American countries. The results indicate that the flow of monthly data helps to improve forecast accuracy, and the dynamic factor model consistently produces more accurate nowcasts and forecasts relative to other model specifications, across most of the countries we consider.

Series:

Working Paper No. 2011/098

Subject:

Commodity prices Economic and financial statistics Factor models GDP forecasting Vector autoregression

English

Publication Date:

April 1, 2011

ISBN/ISSN:

9781455254293/1018-5941

Stock No:

WPIEA2011098

Pages:

25

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