Quarterly Real GDP Estimates for China and ASEAN4 with a Forecast Evaluation

The growing affluence of the East and Southeast Asian economies has come about through a substantial increase in their economic links with the rest of the world, the OECD economies in particular. Econometric studies that try to quantify these links face a severe shortage of high frequency time series data for China and the group of ASEAN4 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand). In this exercise we provide quarterly real GDP estimates for these countries derived by applying the Chow-Lin related series technique to annual real GDP series. The quality of the disaggregated series is evaluated through a number of indirect methods. Some potential problems of using readily available univariate disaggregation techniques are also highlighted.