Recent developments in the Business Tendency Survey area at the OECD Michela Gamba, Statistics Directorate OECD – EU Workshop on BTS – Brussels November 2012

Outline OECD recent work in the BTS area New hierarchy for the OECD Tendency Surveys Seasonal adjustment project Handbook on Tendency Surveys 2

New hierarchy for Tendency Surveys Rationale – Transparency & comparability – Simplify the coding system – Reconciliation with international standards – More coherence with the new Handbook on BS/CS – Target list built on the standard list agreed in the harmonised EC system 3

New hierarchy for Tendency Surveys Steps Revised target list in accordance with new BS & CS Handbook – Inventory of existing series – Country coverage New coding – Matching old codes with new – Harmonise CIs compilation – Harmonise metadata go live by end of 2013Q1 4

Seasonal adjustment project Background Is it necessary to seasonally adjust business and consumer confidence series? – OECD, eys/ pdf Enhanced DEMETRA+ – Free at circa.europa.eu – Developed by NBB, maintained by EuroStat – based on both TRAMO/SEATS and X-12 Arima – Allowing multi-processing and single-processing 5

Seasonal adjustment Implementation The rule for selecting series currently s.a. by OECD gross series provided by countries …but also… s.a. series by the EC …for a total of 730 series for BS and 78 series for CS 6

Seasonal adjustment The method Steps to follow 1 –assessing prerequisites by checking the quality of original data 2- perform seasonal adjustment 3- analysis of results 4- refine/readjust export to system 7

Handbook on Tendency Surveys Background Steering group: StatCan, Statistics Netherlands, ROSSTAT, ES, UNSD Working group: ISTAT (lead), UNSD, OECD, NSCB Philippines, Swiss KoF, Statistics Netherlands Scope: prepare a Handbook on Tendency Surveys with best practices and a proposed harmonised questionnaire to be implemented by countries Draw upon OECD and EC handbooks but addressed to a broader audience and including more sectors final draft end to be presented to the UN Statistical Commission by Feb 2014 Timing: final draft end to be presented to the UN Statistical Commission by Feb

Handbook on Tendency Surveys OECD contribution QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN 1. Keys aspects for questions to be covered Formulation (what to ask, why and how) Definition (what to measure) backward/forward looking Time horizon (past-present-future) Growth vs level (ups-downs vs below-above normal) Seasonality 2. Define sets of core variables for BTS & CS to be used in harmonised questionnaires at various frequencies 3. Account for any departures (country specific, ad-hoc/ experimental questions) 4. Cover background information on businesses and respondents 5. Pre-testing USE OF TENDENCY SURVEYS RESULTS Use of confidence indicators for business cycle analysis 9

…and the usual business Maintaining rolling updates of series Consolidating BRIICS coverage Extend data coverage to G20 10

….Thank you for your attention! – EU Workshop on BTS – Brussels November