Indicador Mensual de Actividad Económica de Río Negro. Una aplicación para analizar el impacto económico del COVID19

Abstract

We estimate a monthly coincident index of regional economic activity for the Argentinean province of Río Negro from 2004 to 2020. We considered a set of series related to the economic cycle, assuming that there is a common unobservable factor that we estimate using dynamic factor models. The scarce and outdated official data for regional economic indexes justify this attempt, although it imposes another methodological problem related to the choice ofa benchmark series. Despite the methodological issues, the estimated index reproduces the economic growth of Río Negro, and it allows analyzing the impact of exogenous shocks like COVID-19 on economic activity. The results confirm that the worst economic effect of the pandemic happened during the most stringent sanitary measures between March and April. In December of 2020, the recovery was not enough to reach the pre-pandemic levels of economic activity.