Benchmarking of economic time series - ARCHIVED

Benchmarking is a method of improving estimates from a sub-annual survey with the help of corresponding estimates from an annual survey. For example, estimates of monthly retail sales might be improved using estimates from the annual survey. This article deals, first with the problem posed by the benchmarking of time series produced by economic surveys, and then reviews the most relevant methods for solving this problem. Next, two new statistical methods are proposed, based on a non-linear model for sub-annual data. The benchmarked estimates are then obtained by applying weighted least squares.