IMF | SARTTAC

Target Audience

Officials responsible for compiling short-term or monthly economic indicators in central banks and statistical offices.

Qualifications

Participants should have a degree in economics or statistics or equivalent experience.

Course Description

This course deals with identification and assessment of elementary indicators and techniques for combining them into a single index of economic activity to track national trends. Flash estimates or indexes of economic activity bring together a range of elementary indicators to give timely general measures of economic activity. These measures give policy makers useful information that complements annual and quarterly GDP estimates, which are more comprehensive but usually only available after substantial lags, and provide a more comprehensive picture than individual monthly and quarterly indicators, which are up-to-the-minute but reflect just a portion of the total economy).

This course is for actual or potential compilers of short-term indicators in central banks and statistical offices and for those who collect data for monthly indicators. Participants are expected to work with their own monthly and quarterly time series during the course. These indicators will be used in the practical session as the basis for experimental estimates.

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:

1)         Explain the nature and potential uses of high-frequency statistics on economic activity and their relation to and consistency with the system of national accounts.

2)         Design a simple framework for compiling an index of economic activity, from collection of source data to application of simple statistical methods and index compilation techniques.

3)         Exploit useful short-term information contained in the Index of Economic Activity by applying analytical tools, deriving tables, and statistical procedures.