러시아ㆍ유라시아

In December 2009, the New Economic School and Renaissance Capital, a leading Russian investment bank, started to produce a short-term GDP forecast labeled as the RenCap-NES Leading GDP Indicator. The forecast is constructed using information that is more readily available compared with official GDP figures whose earliest estimates are normally released no sooner than 1.5 months after the end of the respec-tive quarter. The goal of the new index is to measure the current stance of economic activity in Russia. Potential audiences that it targets include government officials, analysts, investors, and business people.

RenCap-NES Leading GDP Indicator

The RenCap-NES Leading GDP Indicator exploits about 100 economic and financial time series at monthly frequencies. Part of them is official statistical data provided by Rosstat, a state statistical agency. They cover national accounts aggregate data, industrial output by sector, labor market variables, retail and wholesale sales, prices, cargo shipment, production volumes of most important items such as crude oil and natural gas, etc. Another group of variables, about one third of total, come from enterprise surveys run by the Russian Economic Barometer, an independent research entity. A panel of executives are questioned about the current state and expectations of demand for their company’s products, condition of inventories, order books, costs, etc. Finally, our dataset includes commodity prices, foreign currency exchange rates, domestic and foreign interest rates, and stock market indices.