Series: Working Papers. 1921.
Author: Diego Bodas, Juan R. García López, Juan Murillo Arias, Matías J. Pacce, Tomasa Rodrigo López, Juan de Dios Romero Palop, Pep Ruiz de Aguirre, Camilo A. Ulloa and Heribert Valero Lapaz.
Topics: Competitiveness | Other means of payment | Quantitative methods | International investment position, External debt | Economic situation.
Published in: International Journal of Forecasting. Volume 37, Issue 3, July–September 2021, Pages 1235-1246
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Abstract
In this paper we present a high-dimensionality Retail Trade Index (RTI) constructed to
nowcast the retail trade sector economic performance in Spain, using Big Data sources
and techniques. The data are the footprints of BBVA clients from their credit or debit card
transactions at Spanish point of sale (PoS) terminals. The resulting indexes have been
found to be robust when compared with the Spanish RTI, regional RTI (Spain’s autonomous
regions), and RTI by retailer type (distribution classes) published by the National Statistics
Institute (INE). We also went one step further, computing the monthly indexes for the
provinces and sectors of activity and the daily general index, by obtaining timely, detailed
information on retail sales. Finally, we analyzed the high-frequency consumption dynamics
using BBVA retailer behavior and a structural time series model.