Seasonal Adjustment in Volatile Economic Situations: Statistics Canada's Experience

• Activity Number: 24
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 4, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Business and Economic Statistics Section
• Author(s): Michel Ferland and Susie Fortier and Zdenek Patak and Steve Matthews*+
• Companies: Statistics Canada and Statistics Canada and Statistics Canada and Statistics Canada
• Keywords: REGARIMA ; seasonal adjustment ; X12-ARIMA

Abstract

Seasonal adjustment is an important process used in most infra-annual economic indicator programs at Statistics Canada, notably those that support the production of the GDP. By filtering out systematic movement due to both seasonal and calendar effects, the purpose of seasonal adjustment is to highlight the underlying trend-cycle, take into consideration outliers or irregular events and offer a more timely picture of the current economic situation. In volatile economic times, producing seasonally adjusted data may be challenging. In this paper, we will present recent examples of seasonal adjustments where interesting results were obtained by going beyond the usual seasonal adjustment options. We will also illustrate simple diagnostics which can be useful to detect structural changes in seasonal patterns.