Northern Ireland Composite Economic Index: Development of a quarterly output measure for NI

Abstract

This paper presents the methodology and results of an experimental Composite Economic Index developed by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). The aim of the Index is to provide a short term measure of the performance of the NI economy using a mainly output based approach. It combines existing official statistics series from the Index of Services, Index of Production, Index of Construction, Agriculture and public sector employee jobs based on their relative share of annual GVA to provide a chain-linked measure of total quarterly economic activity for NI. The index is not a comprehensive measure of quarterly Gross Domestic Product as there are no income and expenditure components. However the composite methodology has been applied to the equivalent UK series and the results correspond well with the UK GDP series.