The growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) is a key indicator of economic activity, but the official estimate is released with a delay and routinely revised in retrospect, quarters and years after the original ‘guesstimates’. To stay ahead of the pack it is critical to devise tools and methods for making more real time assessments.
With this in mind, the Atlanta Fed’s new GDPNow is designed as a forecasting model “nowcast” of the official estimate prior to its release. Here is the latest read for Q1 in green versus previous estimates and the consensus views:
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2015 was 0.3 percent on March 17, down from 0.6 percent on March 12. Following yesterday morning’s industrial production release from the Federal Reserve Board that reported a 17 percent decline in oil and gas well drilling in February, the nowcast for first-quarter real nonresidential structures investment growth fell from -13.3 percent to -19.6 percent. See: GDP Now- Federal Reserve of Atlanta
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