Jurriaan Biesheuvel
Indicators in Dutch economy:
Doing more with less
Seminar on the Role of National Statistical Offices in the production of Leading, Composite and Sentiment Indicators 8 - 10 December 2015 Geneva
Dutch economy
• Gateway to Europe
• Technology (electronic, bio, chemical)
• After USA largest exporting country of agriculture products (flowers)
• GDP: $800 billion
• 17 million inhabitants, GDP per capita: $52.000
2
Probing economic climate
Until 2008:
• 5 different organizations
• Similar questions in different questionnaires
• Varying quality
• No standard measures, hard to compare data
High administrative burden
(annoyance at companies)
3
Q. How do you expect your production to develop over the next 3 months?
Questionnaires with business related questions
Since 2008: Integration
4
Cooperation of 5 organizations
One main executor: Statistics Netherlands
Stratified sample survey:
• One questionnaire for all branches
• adapted to DG ECFIN1 requirements where necessary
Direct results
• Comparable
• Consistency
• Reduction sample size
• Reduction administrative burden
Automation • Reduction of working hours • Reduction of error sensitivity
1. DG ECFIN: Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs
News center
5
Dutch business survey
6
• Monthly, quarterly, annually questionnaires
• Stratification: company size, region, business branch (NACE)
• Weighted by number of employees
R1 R2 R3 R4
RT
G1
G2
GT
S11
S12
S20
S10
ST
S…
branch
region
size
Indirect results
7
producer confidence
Composite Indicator:
Economic Indicators
• Confidence indicators
‐ Manufacturing industry
‐ Construction
‐ Retail trade
‐ Service sector
‐ Mining and quarrying
‐ Wholesale
• Job vacancy indicator
• Index order position
Comparison with European indicators
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Economic Indicators
• Confidence indicators
‐ Manufacturing industry
‐ Construction
‐ Retail trade
‐ Service sector
‐ Mining and quarrying
‐ Wholesale
• Job vacancy indicator
• Index order position
DG ECFIN indicator:
Economic Sentiment Indicator
- Manufacturing industry
- Construction
- Retail trade
- Service sector
- Consumers
Business climate indicator (Industry: 5 questions)
Example: confidence indicator
9
Monthly survey for manufacturing industry: 11 questions in total
Q1. How do you expect your production to develop over the next 3 months? It will... Q2. Do you consider the current overall book order to be… Q3. Do you consider your current stock of finished products to be...?
+ = −
3 questions used for confidence indicator:
Example: confidence indicator
10
Balance: Total + minus total −
Seasonal correction
Q1. Q2. Q3.
weight
confidence indicator for manufacturing industry
+ −
aggregation
Seasonal correction
weight
+ −
Seasonal correction
weight
+ −
International comparison
11
Balance (%)
Confidence indicator manufacturing industry November 2015*
*Large majority of data was taken before Paris terror attacks at 2015-11-13
-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10
Europe
Belgium
Germany
Greece
Netherlands
Hungary
France
Example: composite indicator
Producer confidence
12
Indicator Branch A
weight
…
aggregation
Producer confidence
Indicator Branch B
weight
Indicator Branch C
weight
Producer confidence as leading indicator
– Producer Confidence vs GDP
13
-30
-25
-20
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
20
-6
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
IV I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV
'08 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Pro
du
cer
con
fid
en
ce (
%)
% g
row
th
GDP y-on-y GDP q-on-q producer confidence
Leading indicator: Vacancies
14
-1.2
-0.9
-0.6
-0.3
0.0
0.3
0.6
0.9
1.2
-10
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
10
I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV I II III IV
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Va
can
cy in
dic
ato
r (%
)
% g
row
th
Growth of vacancies q-on-q Vacancy indicator
Q. How do you expect your firm’s total employment to change over the next 3 months?
10
-30
20
40
0
30
-40
-20
-10
Future planning
15
• New temporal questions
- R&D
- innovation
• Adjust derived indicators completely to DG ECFIN definitions
- Economic sentiment indicator = producer confidence
- Business climate indicator
• Further refinement aggregation (district level)
• Publish statistical uncertainties
- include uncertainty seasonal correction bootstrapping
Conclusions
• Statistics Netherlands is the main executor of producing
statistics of the Dutch economic climate.
• Confidence and vacancy indicators can be used as leading
indicators.
• Future: further harmonization
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Dutch business survey
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Panel Observation period
branch Number of strata
Sample size
Month panel First 3 weeks of month
Industry Services Manufacturing
191 4.500
Quarter panel First 6 weeks of quarter
All commercial business companies
235 6.000
Year panel First 6 weeks of 4th quarter
All commercial business companies
132 20.000