The Business Survey's new indicator of economic activity - an early temperature gauge of the Swedish economy

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The Business Survey's new indicator of economic activity - an early temperature gauge of the Swedish economy

APPENDIX - Tables and charts

Published: 27 October 2023

Estimates of the Business Survey indicator when the time horizon is extended — Source: The Riksbank

Table 4. Correlation coefficients, indicators of economic activity and GDP, 2008-2023
	GDP q/q	GDP q/q (real time)	GDP y/y	GDP y/y(real time)
Business Survey indicator	0.48	0.49	0.74	0.73
Economic Tendency Survey (NIER)	0.50	0.53	0.88	0.87
Business sector confidence indicator (NIER)	0.47	0.45	0.73	0.70
PMI services (SB/SILF)	0.52	0.50	0.84	0.79
PMI industry (SB/SILF)	0.55	0.49	0.71	0.66

Source: The Riksbank.

Table 5. Correlation between the Business Survey indicator and other survey-based indicators of economic activity, 2008-2023
	Correlation coefficient
Economic Tendency Survey (NIER)	0.89
Business sector confidence indicator (NIER)	0.78
PMI services (SB/SILF)	0.86
PMI industry (SB/SILF)	0.89

Source: The Riksbank.

Table 6. Forecast evaluation for quarterly change in GDP, 2016-2022, RMSE in relation to the benchmark model
	GDP q/q (real time)		GDP q/q
	One quarter ahead	Two quarters ahead	One quarter ahead	Two quarters ahead
AR (1) without indicator	1	1	1	1
Business Survey indicator	0.69	0.74	0.71	0.73
Current economic situation	0.88	0.93	0.95	0.96
Economic situation +6m	0.96	0.93	0.96	0.89
New orders -3m	0.76	0.83	0.75	0.81
New orders +3m	0.89	0.87	0.91	0.82
Production/sales -3m	0.66	0.73	0.71	0.79
Production/sales +3m	0.87	0.84	0.92	0.80
Employment -3m	0.80	0.85	0.95	0.96
Employment +3m	0.84	0.84	0.94	0.87
Investment plans	0.72	0.82	0.81	0.87
External financing	0.78	0.85	0.73	0.75
Profitability	0.96	0.99	1.0	1.01

Source: The Riksbank.