1. Recent developments in the Business Tendency Survey area at the OECD Michela Gamba, Statistics Directorate OECD – EU Workshop on BTS – Brussels 15-16 November 2012

2. Outline OECD recent work in the BTS area New hierarchy for the OECD Tendency Surveys Seasonal adjustment project Handbook on Tendency Surveys 2

3. New hierarchy for Tendency Surveys Rationale – Transparency & comparability – Simplify the coding system – Reconciliation with international standards – More coherence with the new Handbook on BS/CS – Target list built on the standard list agreed in the harmonised EC system 3

4. New hierarchy for Tendency Surveys Steps Revised target list in accordance with new BS & CS Handbook – Inventory of existing series – Country coverage New coding – Matching old codes with new – Harmonise CIs compilation – Harmonise metadata go live by end of 2013Q1 4

5. Seasonal adjustment project Background Is it necessary to seasonally adjust business and consumer confidence series? – OECD, 2008 www.oecd.org/std/leadingindicatorsandtendencysurv eys/43858762.pdf Enhanced DEMETRA+ – Free at circa.europa.eu – Developed by NBB, maintained by EuroStat – based on both TRAMO/SEATS and X-12 Arima – Allowing multi-processing and single-processing 5

6. Seasonal adjustment Implementation The rule for selecting series currently s.a. by OECD gross series provided by countries …but also… s.a. series by the EC …for a total of 730 series for BS and 78 series for CS 6

7. Seasonal adjustment The method Steps to follow 1 –assessing prerequisites by checking the quality of original data 2- perform seasonal adjustment 3- analysis of results 4- refine/readjust export to system 7

8. Handbook on Tendency Surveys Background Steering group: StatCan, Statistics Netherlands, ROSSTAT, ES, UNSD Working group: ISTAT (lead), UNSD, OECD, NSCB Philippines, Swiss KoF, Statistics Netherlands Scope: prepare a Handbook on Tendency Surveys with best practices and a proposed harmonised questionnaire to be implemented by countries Draw upon OECD and EC handbooks but addressed to a broader audience and including more sectors final draft end 2013- to be presented to the UN Statistical Commission by Feb 2014 Timing: final draft end 2013- to be presented to the UN Statistical Commission by Feb 2014 8

9. Handbook on Tendency Surveys OECD contribution QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN 1. Keys aspects for questions to be covered Formulation (what to ask, why and how) Definition (what to measure) backward/forward looking Time horizon (past-present-future) Growth vs level (ups-downs vs below-above normal) Seasonality 2. Define sets of core variables for BTS & CS to be used in harmonised questionnaires at various frequencies 3. Account for any departures (country specific, ad-hoc/ experimental questions) 4. Cover background information on businesses and respondents 5. Pre-testing USE OF TENDENCY SURVEYS RESULTS Use of confidence indicators for business cycle analysis 9

10. …and the usual business Maintaining rolling updates of series Consolidating BRIICS coverage Extend data coverage to G20 10

11. ….Thank you for your attention! Michela.gamba@OECD.org – EU Workshop on BTS – Brussels 15-16 November 2012 11