Description

The COVID-19 crisis has had a tremendous economic impact for all countries. Yet, assessing the full impact of the crisis has been frequently hampered by the delayed publication of official GDP statistics in several emerging market and developing economies. This paper outlines a machine-learning framework that helps track economic activity in real time for these economies. As illustrative examples, the framework is applied to selected sub-Saharan African economies. The framework is able to provide timely information on economic activity more swiftly than official statistics.

More publications in this series: Working Papers

More publications by: Karim Barhoumi ; Seung Mo Choi ; Tara Iyer ; Jiakun Li ; Franck Ouattara ; Andrew J Tiffin ; Jiaxiong Yao