EXPANSION OF DATA FOR BUSINESS TENDENCY AND
CONSUMER OPINION SURVEYS
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The OECD has significantly expanded the range of data series
it provides on business tendency and consumer opinion surveys in the Main
Economic Indicators (MEI) database, in particular for the Construction, Retail
Trade and Services industries. This is in response to the increasing use of
these data for monitoring and forecasting business cycles, and in econometric
models to predict key macro economic variables (e.g. GDP, Industrial
Production). An important aspect of these data is their timeliness,
with data for the most recent month being made available in all
MEI online and CD-ROM products e.g. February 2004 data is available with the
March 2004 release (except consumer opinion series for Australia, Canada and New
Zealand which will be published with a 1 month lag).
The OECD developed a core set of ‘target indicators’ for
business tendency and consumer opinion surveys within each sector and then
sought to obtain these series for each of the OECD Member and big 6 Non-Member
countries. These target indicators are shown in the table below, although
coverage of these series varies slightly amongst countries depending on the
availability of data. Series for the Construction, Retail Trade and Services
industries are now available in MEI products for all European Union and
Candidate countries, United States (total non-manufacturing only), Japan, Korea,
Switzerland, China, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. The exact list of new
series available from March 2004 for each country and their series codes can be
accessed in the attached
Excel spreadsheet.
This file also contains series which OECD has stopped publishing from March 2004
(indicated by an ‘S’ in the third column of the EXCEL file) or has
recoded/replaced (indicated by an ‘R’).
Where available from data suppliers, OECD aims to provide both seasonally
adjusted and raw series for these data. Where countries do not supply seasonally
adjusted series, OECD is in the process of establishing (i.e. the work is not
yet complete and additional series will be created in the coming months)
seasonally adjusted series using X-12 Reg-ARIMA, provided the series exhibit
seasonality. Series on Consumer Opinions, Construction, Retail Trade and
Services industries for European Union and Candidate Countries are supplied by
the European Commission and are only available in seasonally adjusted form
(using the DAINTIES method of seasonal adjustment).
For further information on the inclusion of these new series, please contact
Ronny Nilsson at ronny.nilsson@oecd.org.
Target list of series for Business and Consumer Opinions:
Manufacturing industry
Manufacturing confidence indicator
Business situation: present
Business situation: future
Production: tendency
Production: future tendency
Orders inflow or demand: tendency
Order books: level
Export order books: level
Finished goods stocks: level
Raw material stocks: present situation
Rate of capacity utilisation
Employment: future tendency
Selling prices: future tendency
Construction
Construction confidence indicator
Business (activity) situation: present
Business (activity) situation: future
Demand/Orders inflow: future tendency
Order books: level
Employment: future tendency
Selling prices: future tendency
Retail Trade
Retail confidence indicator
Business (activity) situation: present
Business (activity) situation: future
Volume of stocks: level
Employment: future tendency
Order intentions or demand
Other Services
Service confidence indicator
Business (activity) situation: present
Business (activity) situation: future
Demand evolution: tendency
Demand evolution: future tendency
Employment: tendency
Employment: future tendency
Consumer opinions
Consumer confidence indicator
Expected inflation
Expected economic situation
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REVISIONS TO MEI SERIES DUE TO A CHANGE IN LINKING
METHODOLOGY
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The OECD has commenced a program to
implement an improved methodology for linking different versions of historical
time series used to create long time series in the MEI database. The main
impacts of this change in methodology is to ensure that raw and seasonally
adjusted versions of the same time series are completely consistent over time,
and that measures of annual growth rates over the entire time series are as
robust as possible.
Further information on the
linking methodology
used in the MEI database is available.
As a result, several time series have been revised in the March 2004 release of
the MEI database. The series affected are listed in the attached
Excel spreadsheet. |