ESTIMATING QUARTERLY GDP DATA FOR THE SOUTH PACIFIC ISLAND NATIONS

Time series analyses generally rely on having a relatively high frequency of consistent and reliable data to work with. However for many South Pacific Island Nations (SPINs), data on macroeconomic series, like GDP, are typically available only annually from the 1980s onwards. This paper empirically estimates quarterly GDP data from annual series using the modified Chow and Lin (1971) approach. We link available annual GDP series for select SPINs with GDP-related series that are available quarterly. We deem that our quarterly estimates of GDP are more consistent and reliable compared to estimates obtained through less sophisticated methods of univariate interpolation.