Forecasting regional GDP with factor models: How useful are national and international data?

- Can regional forecasts be improved by using national and international data?
- We use a targeted factor approach with Canadian data to explore this question.
- National and US timeseries can improve short-term regional forecasts.

We assess the contribution of national (country-wide) and international data to the task of forecasting the real GDP of Canadian provinces. Using the targeting predictors approach of Bai and Ng (2008) [Bai, J., Ng, S., 2008. Forecasting economic time series using targeted predictors. Journal of Econometrics 146, 304-317], we find that larger datasets containing regional, national and international data help improve forecasting accuracy for horizons below the one-year-ahead mark, but that beyond that horizon, relying on provincial data alone produces the best forecasts. These results suggest that shocks originating at the national and international levels are transmitted to Canadian regions and reflected in regional timeseries fairly rapidly.