Estimating multi-country prosperity index: A two-dimensional singular spectrum analysis approach

Abstract

With the development of the global economy, interaction among different economic entities from one region is intensifying, which makes it significant to consider such interaction when constructing composite index for each country from one region. Recent advances in signal extraction and time series analysis have made such consideration feasible and practical. Singular spectrum analysis (SSA) is a well-developed technique for time series analysis and proven to be a powerful tool for signal extraction. The present study aims to introduce the usage of the SSA technique for multi-country business cycle analysis. The multivariate SSA (MSSA) is employed to construct a model-based composite index and the two dimensional SSA (2D-SSA) is employed to establish the multi-country composite index. Empirical results performed on Chinese economy demonstrate the accuracy and stability of MSSA-based composite index, and the 2D-SSA based composite indices for Asian countries confirm the efficiency of the technique in capturing the interaction among different countries.