It Can’t Get No Worse: Using Twitter Data to Improve GDP Estimates for Developing Countries
<p dir="ltr">This paper shows that we can use social media data to improve the accuracy of GDP estimates at the country level for developing countries. I use all publicly available image tweets from 2012 and 2013 to estimate GDP at the country level for developing countries. First, I...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Published: |
2023
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | <p dir="ltr">This paper shows that we can use social media data to improve the accuracy of GDP estimates at the country level for developing countries. I use all publicly available image tweets from 2012 and 2013 to estimate GDP at the country level for developing countries. First, I find that one can explain 76% of the cross-country variation in GDP with the volume of tweets sent from each country. I then show that the residuals on these Twitter-GDP estimates are significantly larger for countries with allegedly poor data quality. I then use Nigeria as a case study to show that this method delivers much more timely and accurate estimates than those presented by official statistic agencies.</p><h2 dir="ltr">Other Information</h2><p dir="ltr">Published in: ITISE 2023<br>License: <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</a><br>See article on publisher's website: <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/engproc2023039049" target="_blank">https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/engproc2023039049</a></p> |
|---|