- Title: Weekly economic activity: Measurement and informational content
- Authors: Philipp Wegmüller, Christian Glocker & Valentino Guggia
- Journal: Volume 39, Issue 1, January–March 2023, Pages 228-243
Abstract: “We construct a composite index to measure the real activity of the Swiss economy on a weekly frequency. The index is based on a novel high-frequency data set capturing economic activity across distinct dimensions over a long time horizon. We propose a six- step procedure for extracting precise business cycle signals from the raw data. By means of a real-time evaluation, we highlight the importance of our proposed adjustment procedure: (i) our weekly index significantly outperforms a comparable index without adjusted input variables; and (ii) the weekly index outperforms established monthly indicators in nowcasting GDP growth. These insights should help improve other recently developed high-frequency indicators.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207021001734