Using information in newspaper articles as an indicator of real economic activity

This box presents a simple indicator for US real economic activity based on the textual analysis of newspaper articles. The indicator correlates well with US contractions and NBER recession dates. In order to formally assess the predictive information content of the index, it is included in a regression framework in which US recessions are forecast. Results suggest that the index has good forecasting properties, outperforming a standard yield curve model at short horizons (up to eight months ahead). The text analysis index also improves the forecasting performance of standard yield curve models at longer horizons. Taken together, these results suggest that the index is useful for monitoring and predicting economic developments, particularly over short horizons. This approach also has the advantage of being easily updatable (on a daily basis) and applicable to different countries. JEL Classification: C1, C25, E32, E37