28 Oct. 2021

Second-round effects

Web scraping and language models can help keep track of indirect and second round effects.

The Inflation NewsBot and NIPI data show core inflation pressures are definitely building up now.

We also have a NIPI-Wage measure, which should prove critical in the coming months. We had mentioned the US and the euro area NIPI-Wages in the past, but the most significant break recently happened in the UK. The last observation on the chart below is barely visible - it is 116, a record high:

Feature Update: Real-Time Inflation NewsBot

The Inflation NewsBot is a selection of processed news relevant to the near-term inflation forecast. The news are summarized, analyzed and categorized by our in-house language models.

Up to a few weeks ago, the data was accessible only as a daily selection through email, web page or JSON end point (for programmatic access).

We have introduced a new version in September (the Real-Time Inflation NewsBot) with the following upgraded features:

- timeliness - the data is refreshed throughout the day with the latest news

- history - up to 8 days of news can be seen

- control - the user can select the countries, sectors, and even sign of inflation news

The RT Inflation NewsBot is accessible from our client portal. It is available as a free trial to all existing custumers until the beginning of December. Reach out if you need a trial.

Information Overflow in Macro

That's the topic Laurent addressed at Neudata's Macro and Credit Deep Dive conference last week.

To address the problem requires a combination of targeted language models and field specific knowledge.

Presentation available here.

Earlier news

1. Blog Post: "Tracking narratives to forecast food prices", 13/10/2021. Available here.

2. Blog Post: "Is euro area inflation at a breakpoint?", 28/9/2021. Available here.

3. NIPI App update: The US NIPI page now incorporates a "live" comparison between NIPI and US CPI components. Access NIPI here.