Abstract: Because macroeconomic data is published with a substantial delay, assessing the health of the economy during the rapidly evolving COVID-19 crisis is challenging. We develop a fever curve for the Swiss economy using publicly available daily financial market and news data. The indicator can be computed with a delay of 1 day. Moreover, it is highly correlated with macroeconomic data and survey indicators of Swiss economic activity. Therefore, it provides timely and reliable warning signals if the health of the economy takes a turn for the worse.
JEL classification: E32, E37, C53
Keywords: Covid-19, Leading indicator, Financial market data, News sentiment, Forecasting, Switzerland
Recommended citation: Burri Marc and Daniel Kaufmann: "A daily fever curve for the Swiss economy", Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 156(5), 1-11, doi:10.1186/s41937-020-00051-z
Data up to 2023-07-03 are available in this repository. Instructions how to further update the f-curve yourself are listed below.
f-curve data (csv) | Publication | Working Paper | Installation instructions | Revision log
