This is the first in a series of blog posts analysing and discussing quarterly GDP time series in the former Yugoslav republics, now six independent states.
Aims
The aims of these blog posts are the following:
- To describe main features of quarterly GDP time series
- To model series using popular time series models
- To forecast future GDP values
- To compare forecasting performance of different time series models
Dataset
The dataset under examination for all countries comes from the Eurostat database (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database). It shows quarterly GDP chain linked volumes (base = 2010) in million euro. Time series are unadjusted data (i.e. neither seasonally adjusted nor calendar adjusted data). Only in case of Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia Eurostat database contains also seasonally and calendar adjusted data. Time series for Montenegro came from https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/montenegro/nominal-gdp. This is not a chain linked volumes with constant base, but a nominal GDP in USD million.
The following list gives for each country: name, (acronym), and the period covered:
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH): 2008Q1 to 2017Q4
- Croatia (Cro): 2000Q1 to 2018Q2
- Macedonia (Mac): 2000Q1to 2018Q2
- Montenegro (Mon): 2010Q1 to2018Q1
- Serbia (Ser): 1995Q1 to 2018Q2
- Slovenia (Slo): 1995Q1 to 2018Q2.
Dataset description
Dataset is available for download in two formats: csv and RData.
Column name in csv file uses the following format: Zzz, where Zzz is the acronym for the country (BiH, Cro, Mac, Mon, Ser and Slo). The last three series are seasonally and calendar adjusted time series for Croatia (CroS), Serbia (SerS) and Slovenia (SloS). Period covered in the csv file: 1995Q1 to 2018Q2.
Those familiar with R could download and use RData file. This file contains time series in different formats, but the time series used directly in the next blog posts have names in the following format: Zzz, where Zzz is the acronym for the country (BiH, Cro, Mac, Mon, Ser and Slo). All3 is a multivariate time series object containing original and seasonally adjusted time series for Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. This RData file contains also a few other time series objects in different format (a, Ats, Azoo, Azoo.name, Bts, and Bts.name).
In the next blog post line graphs for each country quarterly GDP time series will be presented and discussed.
