Nowcasting of the Russian GDP Using the Current Statistics: Approach Modification

This work presents a modification of the model of GDP short-term estimation based on current macroeconomic statistics initially offered in the paper titled 'Nowcasting and Short-Term Forecasting of Russian GDP with a Dynamic Factor Model' by Alexey Porshakov and co-authors [8]. The model modification presented in this work considers factors separately for each of the three groups of indicators - agents' expectations and their estimate of the current economic situation; financial variables, world market and foreign economic activity indicators; real sector indicators. This model can be used to get GDP estimates for the previous and current quarters, which allows researchers to obtain information on output dynamics in the economy in addition to estimates under other models and expert judgments. Also, the model helps decompose GDP quarterly growth rates into various factors.