Publications

BBVA Research, through its GDP Tracker tool, monitors the performance of the economy in real time and makes short-term GDP forecasts. For the second quarter, the GDP tracker forecasts YoY GDP growth between 0.1% and 1.3%. In addition, for the third quarter, growth is forecast to be between 1.1% and 2.2%.

BBVA Research present at the Conference on Non-traditional Data, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in Macroeconomics. We show evidence that Big Data from financial transactions is very useful for Nowcasting models of consumption and investment and reinforces the power of our traditional models.

The Spanish economy could contract by 11.5% in 2020 and grow by 7% in 2021. The drop in activity could exceed 20% in 1H20. However, the easing of restrictions has allowed the recovery to begin. GDP could increase by 10% quarter on quarter in 3Q20.

The Industrial Production (IP) increased by 3.4% yoy in calendar adjusted terms in September, slightly higher than median market expectation. We maintain our GDP growth forecast at 0.3% for now, but the pace of acceleration puts strong upside risks on our expectation around 1%. Our forecast for 2020 remains neutral at 3%.

Big data techniques help us to enrich traditional databases with high dimensional data, but there are still some challenges we have to face. Real time data, combined with historical data may end up changing the way in which economists approach empirical questions and the tools they use to answer them.

Industrial production in July grew by 14.5% yoy (cal.adj.). Our monthly GDP indicator (GBTRGDPY index at Bloomberg) nowcasts 5.1% GDP growth for 2Q and hints even higher performance for 3Q. Considering also an acceleration in 3Q with both base impact and enhanced activity, we believe that the risks on our 5% GDP growth expectation for 2017 are clearly on the upside.

Nowcast model predicts 0.55% for 1Q16 real GDP growth. The modest forecast may be affected by residual seasonality