Nowcasting Economic Activity in Times of COVID-19 : An Approximation from the Google Community Mobility Report
This paper proposes a leading indicator, the "Google Mobility Index," for nowcasting monthly industrial production growth rates in selected economies in Latin America and the Caribbean. The index is constructed using the Google COVID-19 C...
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/619261589478136374/Nowcasting-Economic-Activity-in-Times-of-COVID-19-An-Approximation-from-the-Google-Community-Mobility-Report http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33794 |
| Summary: | This paper proposes a leading indicator,
the "Google Mobility Index," for nowcasting
monthly industrial production growth rates in selected
economies in Latin America and the Caribbean. The index is
constructed using the Google COVID-19 Community Mobility
Report database via a Kalman filter. The Google database is
publicly available starting from February 15, 2020. The
paper uses a backcasting methodology to increase the
historical number of observations and then augments a lag of
one week in the mobility data with other high-frequency data
(air quality) over January 1, 2019 to April 30, 2020.
Finally, mixed data sampling regression is implemented for
nowcasting industrial production growth rates. The Google
Mobility Index is a good predictor of industrial production.
The results suggest a significant decline in output of
between 5 and 7 percent for March and April, respectively,
while indicating a trough in output in mid-April. |
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