Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hfa/wpaper/20-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Nowcasting Unemployment Insurance Claims in the Time of COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • William D. Larson

    (Federal Housing Finance Agency)

  • Tara M. Sinclair

    (George Washington University)

Abstract
Near term forecasts, also called nowcasts, are most challenging but also most important when the economy experiences an abrupt change. In this paper, we explore the performance of models with different information sets and data structures in order to best nowcast US initial unemployment claims in spring of 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that the best model, particularly near the structural break in claims, is a state-level panel model that includes dummy variables to capture the variation in timing of state-of-emergency declarations. Autoregressive models perform poorly at first but catch up relatively quickly. Models including Google Trends are outperformed by alternative models in nearly all periods. Our results suggest that in times of structural change there may be simple approaches to exploit relevant information in the cross sectional dimension to improve forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • William D. Larson & Tara M. Sinclair, 2020. "Nowcasting Unemployment Insurance Claims in the Time of COVID-19," FHFA Staff Working Papers 20-02, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
    • Handle: RePEc:hfa:wpaper:20-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.fhfa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/wp2002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.fhfa.gov/research/papers/wp2002
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wright, Jonathan H., 2019. "Some observations on forecasting and policy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1186-1192.
    2. Brian Chi-ang Lin & Siqi Zheng & Felix Pretis & Lea Schneider & Jason E. Smerdon & David F. Hendry, 2016. "Detecting Volcanic Eruptions In Temperature Reconstructions By Designed Break-Indicator Saturation," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 403-429, July.
    3. Castle, Jennifer L. & Clements, Michael P. & Hendry, David F., 2015. "Robust approaches to forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 99-112.
    4. Neumark, David & Zhang, Junfu & Ciccarella, Stephen, 2008. "The effects of Wal-Mart on local labor markets," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 405-430, March.
    5. Goodfriend, Marvin, 1992. "Information-Aggregation Bias," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 508-519, June.
    6. D’Amuri, Francesco & Marcucci, Juri, 2017. "The predictive power of Google searches in forecasting US unemployment," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 801-816.
    7. Jennifer Castle & David Hendry & Nicholas W.P. Fawcett, 2011. "Forecasting breaks and forecasting during breaks," Economics Series Working Papers 535, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Frank Schorfheide & Dongho Song, 2024. "Real-Time Forecasting with a (Standard) Mixed-Frequency VAR During a Pandemic," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 20(4), pages 275-320, October.
    9. Bańbura, Marta & Giannone, Domenico & Modugno, Michele & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2013. "Now-Casting and the Real-Time Data Flow," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 195-237, Elsevier.
    10. Castle, Jennifer L. & Fawcett, Nicholas W.P. & Hendry, David F., 2010. "Forecasting with equilibrium-correction models during structural breaks," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(1), pages 25-36, September.
    11. David F. Hendry & Hans-Martin Krolzig, 2005. "The Properties of Automatic "GETS" Modelling," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(502), pages 32-61, March.
    12. Hendry, David F. & Hubrich, Kirstin, 2011. "Combining Disaggregate Forecasts or Combining Disaggregate Information to Forecast an Aggregate," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 29(2), pages 216-227.
    13. Patrick Bajari & Victor Chernozhukov & Ali Hortaçsu & Junichi Suzuki, 2019. "The Impact of Big Data on Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 33-37, May.
    14. Christopher J. Cronin & William N. Evans, 2020. "Private Precaution and Public Restrictions: What Drives Social Distancing and Industry Foot Traffic in the COVID-19 Era?," NBER Working Papers 27531, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Holden, K & Peel, D A, 1990. "On Testing for Unbiasedness and Efficiency of Forecasts," The Manchester School of Economic & Social Studies, University of Manchester, vol. 58(2), pages 120-127, June.
    16. Katja Heinisch & Rolf Scheufele, 2018. "Bottom-up or direct? Forecasting German GDP in a data-rich environment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 705-745, March.
    17. Laurent Ferrara & Anna Simoni, 2023. "When are Google Data Useful to Nowcast GDP? An Approach via Preselection and Shrinkage," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 1188-1202, October.
    18. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Smith, Ron, 1995. "Estimating long-run relationships from dynamic heterogeneous panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 79-113, July.
    19. Jennifer L. Castle & Michael P. Clements & David F. Hendry, 2016. "An Overview of Forecasting Facing Breaks," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 12(1), pages 3-23, September.
    20. Nelson, Charles R, 1972. "The Prediction Performance of the FRB-MIT-PENN Model of the U.S. Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 902-917, December.
    21. Jennifer L. Castle & David F. Hendry, 2010. "Nowcasting from disaggregates in the face of location shifts," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1-2), pages 200-214.
    22. Primiceri, Giorgio & Lenza, Michele, 2020. "How to Estimate a VAR after March 2020," CEPR Discussion Papers 15245, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    23. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    24. Badi H. Baltagi, 2008. "Forecasting with panel data," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 153-173.
    25. Hyunyoung Choi & Hal Varian, 2012. "Predicting the Present with Google Trends," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(s1), pages 2-9, June.
    26. Daniel J. Lewis & Karel Mertens & James H. Stock & Mihir Trivedi, 2022. "Measuring real activity using a weekly economic index," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(4), pages 667-687, June.
    27. Daniel Aaronson & Scott A. Brave & R. Andrew Butters & Daniel W. Sacks & Boyoung Seo, 2020. "Using the Eye of the Storm to Predict the Wave of Covid-19 UI Claims," Working Paper Series WP 2020-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    28. Travis J. Berge & Òscar Jordà, 2011. "Evaluating the Classification of Economic Activity into Recessions and Expansions," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 246-277, April.
    29. Daniel Lewis & Karel Mertens & James H. Stock, 2020. "U.S. Economic Activity During the Early Weeks of the SARS-Cov-2 Outbreak," NBER Working Papers 26954, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Harvey, David & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 1997. "Testing the equality of prediction mean squared errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 281-291, June.
    31. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2013. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    32. William Larson, 2015. "Forecasting an Aggregate in the Presence of Structural Breaks in the Disaggregates," Working Papers 2015-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Modelling > Statistical Modelling

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gagan Deep Sharma & Sascha Kraus & Amogh Talan & Mrinalini Srivastava & Christina Theodoraki, 2024. "Navigating the storm: the SME way of tackling the pandemic crisis," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 221-241, June.
    2. Cascaldi-Garcia, Danilo & Ferreira, Thiago R.T. & Giannone, Domenico & Modugno, Michele, 2024. "Back to the present: Learning about the euro area through a now-casting model," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 661-686.
    3. Dergiades, Theologos & Milas, Costas & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2022. "Unemployment claims during COVID-19 and economic support measures in the U.S," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    4. Paul Ho, 2021. "Forecasting in the Absence of Precedent," Working Paper 21-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    5. Liu, Laura & Moon, Hyungsik Roger & Schorfheide, Frank, 2021. "Panel forecasts of country-level Covid-19 infections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 220(1), pages 2-22.
    6. Willem Thorbecke, 2020. "The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the U.S. Economy: Evidence from the Stock Market," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-30, October.
    7. Bańbura, Marta & Belousova, Irina & Bodnár, Katalin & Tóth, Máté Barnabás, 2023. "Nowcasting employment in the euro area," Working Paper Series 2815, European Central Bank.
    8. Berger, Tino & Morley, James & Wong, Benjamin, 2023. "Nowcasting the output gap," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 232(1), pages 18-34.
      • Tino Berger & James Morley & Benjamin Wong, 2020. "Nowcasting the output gap," CAMA Working Papers 2020-78, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    9. Danilo Cascaldi-Garcia & Matteo Luciani & Michele Modugno, 2023. "Lessons from Nowcasting GDP across the World," International Finance Discussion Papers 1385, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Daniel Borup & David E. Rapach & Erik Christian Montes Schütte, 2021. "Now- and Backcasting Initial Claims with High-Dimensional Daily Internet Search-Volume Data," CREATES Research Papers 2021-02, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    11. Liu, Ying & Wen, Long & Liu, Han & Song, Haiyan, 2024. "Predicting tourism recovery from COVID-19: A time-varying perspective," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    12. Lin William Cong & Ke Tang & Bing Wang & Jingyuan Wang, 2021. "An AI-assisted Economic Model of Endogenous Mobility and Infectious Diseases: The Case of COVID-19 in the United States," Papers 2109.10009, arXiv.org.
    13. Borup, Daniel & Rapach, David E. & Schütte, Erik Christian Montes, 2023. "Mixed-frequency machine learning: Nowcasting and backcasting weekly initial claims with daily internet search volume data," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1122-1144.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ericsson, Neil R., 2017. "How biased are U.S. government forecasts of the federal debt?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 543-559.
    2. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Marcellino Massimiliano, 2020. "Nowcasting Tail Risks to Economic Activity with Many Indicators," Working Papers 20-13R2, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, revised 22 Sep 2020.
    3. Jennifer Castle & David Hendry & Oleg Kitov, 2013. "Forecasting and Nowcasting Macroeconomic Variables: A Methodological Overview," Economics Series Working Papers 674, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    4. David Kohns & Arnab Bhattacharjee, 2020. "Nowcasting Growth using Google Trends Data: A Bayesian Structural Time Series Model," Papers 2011.00938, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    5. Jennifer L. Castle & Michael P. Clements & David F. Hendry, 2016. "An Overview of Forecasting Facing Breaks," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 12(1), pages 3-23, September.
    6. Tuhkuri, Joonas, 2016. "Forecasting Unemployment with Google Searches," ETLA Working Papers 35, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    7. Aaronson, Daniel & Brave, Scott A. & Butters, R. Andrew & Fogarty, Michael & Sacks, Daniel W. & Seo, Boyoung, 2022. "Forecasting unemployment insurance claims in realtime with Google Trends," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 567-581.
    8. Alessandro Girardi & Roberto Golinelli & Carmine Pappalardo, 2017. "The role of indicator selection in nowcasting euro-area GDP in pseudo-real time," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 79-99, August.
    9. Barbaglia, Luca & Frattarolo, Lorenzo & Onorante, Luca & Pericoli, Filippo Maria & Ratto, Marco & Tiozzo Pezzoli, Luca, 2023. "Testing big data in a big crisis: Nowcasting under Covid-19," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1548-1563.
    10. Ericsson, Neil R., 2017. "Economic forecasting in theory and practice: An interview with David F. Hendry," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 523-542.
    11. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    12. Berger, Tino & Morley, James & Wong, Benjamin, 2023. "Nowcasting the output gap," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 232(1), pages 18-34.
      • Tino Berger & James Morley & Benjamin Wong, 2020. "Nowcasting the output gap," CAMA Working Papers 2020-78, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    13. Edward S. Knotek & Saeed Zaman, 2017. "Nowcasting U.S. Headline and Core Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(5), pages 931-968, August.
    14. Kohns, David & Bhattacharjee, Arnab, 2023. "Nowcasting growth using Google Trends data: A Bayesian Structural Time Series model," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1384-1412.
    15. Wegmüller, Philipp & Glocker, Christian & Guggia, Valentino, 2023. "Weekly economic activity: Measurement and informational content," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 228-243.
    16. van der Wielen, Wouter & Barrios, Salvador, 2021. "Economic sentiment during the COVID pandemic: Evidence from search behaviour in the EU," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    17. Karsten Müller, 2022. "German forecasters’ narratives: How informative are German business cycle forecast reports?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(5), pages 2373-2415, May.
    18. Daniel Borup & David E. Rapach & Erik Christian Montes Schütte, 2021. "Now- and Backcasting Initial Claims with High-Dimensional Daily Internet Search-Volume Data," CREATES Research Papers 2021-02, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    19. Ericsson, Neil R., 2016. "Eliciting GDP forecasts from the FOMC’s minutes around the financial crisis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 571-583.
    20. Rossi, Barbara, 2013. "Advances in Forecasting under Instability," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1203-1324, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    land prices; price gradient; land value taxation; price dynamics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hfa:wpaper:20-02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: William Doerner (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fhfaaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.