"Just Google it": Forecasting Norwegian unemployment figures with web queries
Working paper
Permanent lenke
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/95460Utgivelsesdato
2010Metadata
Vis full innførselSamlinger
Sammendrag
This thesis explores whether online search queries, represented by Google search
queries, contain information useful in forecasting short term unemployment
figures in Norway or not. Based on earlier work utilizing online web queries this
should be possible, even in small countries. Looking at job search theory supplied
with intuition, words from the Norwegian Welfare Administration (NAV) and
counseling from the Language Council of Norway we create four Google
Indicators that we add to baseline models to check if this reduces the forecasting
error (RMSE) of the models. Our findings supports our hypothesis, that Google
search contain information useful when predicting short term changes in
unemployment. Our top performing model improves the forecasting accuracy
compared to its baseline model by 18.3% on average over twelve months. Our
best models also outperform the leading indicator “published job advertisements”.
These are remarkable results given the noise in our data.
Beskrivelse
This publication is originally a master thesis submitted to BI Norwegian Business School 2010.