The official statistics on economic activity in Italy's regions are published annually with a lag of about one year compared with the reference period. This work proposes a quarterly indicator of regional economic activity (Indicatore Trimestrale dell'Economia Regionale - ITER), which allows a more timely assessment of the economic cycle at regional level. The defining features of the indicator are its timeliness and consistency with the official economic data at national level.
The statistical methodology adopted in this paper combines a parsimonious set of cyclical indicators for the regional economies with the official GDP data for Italy. The estimates yielded by the model, calculated at the macro-area level, produce time series that track regional economic activity on a quarterly basis. Furthermore, the model adopted here is able to predict the annual growth rate of the regional economies with a satisfactory degree of accuracy.
