High-frequency monitoring of growth at risk
Résumé
Monitoring changes in financial conditions provides valuable information on the contribution
of financial risks to future economic growth. For that purpose, central banks need Q3
real-time indicators to promptly adjust their policy stance. In this paper, we extend the
quarterly growth-at-risk (GaR) approach of Adrian et al. (2019) by accounting for the
high-frequency nature of financial conditions indicators. Specifically, we use Bayesian
mixed-data sampling (MIDAS) quantile regressions to exploit the information content
of both a financial stress index and a financial conditions index, leading to real-time
Q4 high-frequency GaR measures for the euro area. We show that our daily GaR indicator
(i) displays good GDP nowcasting properties, (ii) can provide an early signal of GDP
downturns, and (iii) allows day-to-day assessment of the effects of monetary policies.
During the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic period, it has provided a timely
measure of the tail risks to euro-area GDP.