通过全球联系预测低收入国家

Nowcasting Low-IncomeCountries Through GlobalLinkages Omer F. Akbal and Domenico Giannone WP/26/107 IMF Working Papersdescribe research inprogress by the author(s) and are published toelicit comments and to encourage debate.The views expressed in IMF Working Papers arethose of the author(s) and do not necessarilyrepresent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board,or IMF management. 2026JUN IMF Working PaperResearch Department Nowcasting Low-Income Countries Through Global LinkagesPrepared by Omer F. Akbal and Domenico Giannone* Authorized for distribution by Petia TopalovaJune2026 IMF Working Papersdescribe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicitcomments and to encourage debate.The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of theauthor(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. ABSTRACT:Timely assessment of economic activity is crucial for effective policymaking at the national,regional, and global levels. However, many economies still do not publish GDP data at a quarterly basis,creating persistent information gaps. In 2025, 34% of economies publish only annual GDP statistics. This lackof higher-frequency and timely data is particularly restrictive for emerging market and developing economies,where economic volatility and spillover risks are often highest. The problem is more severe for historical data:only 42% of economies have quarterly GDP estimates for a period longer than 20 years. To address thesegaps, this paper develops a model that estimates missing quarterly GDP series by leveraging global andregional economic interconnections. The method transforms sparse annual data into quarterly estimates byexploiting higher-frequency information from the rest of the world, enabling real-time policymaking in both data-scarce economies and in global-level discussions. Moreover, this method ensures internally consistentestimates of regional and global economic activity, allowing both top-down and bottom-up scenario analyses. RECOMMENDED CITATION:Akbal, O. and D. Giannone. 2026.Nowcasting Low-Income Countries ThroughGlobal Linkages.IMF Working Paper WP/26/107. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund. Nowcasting Low-Income CountriesThrough Global Linkages Prepared by Omer F. Akbal1and Domenico Giannone2 1Introduction Timely monitoring of economic activity is essential for policymakers, analysts, and privatesector participants.Yet, many economies do not report national accounts statistics at aquarterly frequency, hindering both immediate decision-making and long-term analysis.At the quarterly level, data availability varies considerably across economies and over time. Figure 1 illustrates the percentage of quarters covered in historical GDP datasets, withdarker shades indicating more complete coverage.Advanced economies provide completequarterly GDP data for the past three decades, but for many emerging markets and almostall low-income countries, such data are either partial or entirely unavailable1. As of 2025, 34% of economies continue to report GDP only through an annual nationalaccounts release, with no official quarterly GDP series, and only 42% of economies providequarterly GDP series extending over more than two decades2. This creates blind spots in un-derstanding economic dynamics, particularly in emerging markets and developing economieswhere growth volatility and spillover risks are highest. The consequences are twofold. First,real-time debates and policy actions—especially in fast-changing environments—may be-come less effective as they do not take into account the strength of economic activity ina large share of economies.Second, research and macroeconomic modeling are limited by sparse long-run data.These issues affect not only policymakers, analysts, and businessesin data-scarce economies, but also limit the understanding of aggregate trends in the globaleconomy. As a result, almost a quarter of the global population, representing roughly 10% ofnominal global GDP over the past twenty years, is effectively in the dark for both real-timeanalysis and historical research.Even when quarterly GDP series are available, publication lags vary widely across economies, creating additional blind spots for real-time monitoring. In advanced economies such as theUnited States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, the first GDP estimate is typically releasedwithin about 30 to 45 days after the end of the quarter, whereas this lag extends to roughlythree months in Kenya. In some emerging and developing economies, the delay can be muchlonger: for example, recent quarterly GDP releases in Togo, Uganda, and Jordan have ap-peared close to a year after the quarter ends3. For economies that publish only annual GDP,the delay is even more pronounced. By construction, the year must be completed before na-tional accounts can be compiled, and in practice the typical delay ranges from about half ayear to a median of one year af