Zidong An, Prakash Loungani
A pre-requisite for good macroeconomic policymaking is timely information on the current state of the economy, particularly when economic activity is changing rapidly. Given that GDP figures are usually only available on a quarterly basis, and that monthly survey-based indicators (such as the Purchasing Managers’ Indices) can become unreliable when changes in economic activity are abrupt and massive, the current crisis has prompted a search for alternative high frequency indicators of economic activity. The OECD Economic Outlook (OECD 2020), and a recent OECD paper (Woloszko 2020), discuss one such indicator based on Google Trends, which are used to construct a ‘Weekly Tracker’ that provides real-time estimates of GDP growth in 46 economies covering G20, OECD, and OECD partner countries. The OECD Weekly Tracker data are updated on a regular basis and made available on this webpage.