A Mixed Frequency Approach to Forecast Private Consumption with ATM/POS Data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The recent worldwide development and widespread use of electronic payment systems opened the opportunity to explore new data sources for monitoring macroeconomic activity. In this paper, we analyse the usefulness of data collected from Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and Points-Of-Sale (POS) for nowcasting and forecasting quarterly private consumption. To take advantage of the high frequency availability of such data, we use Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) regressions. A comparison of several MIDAS variants proposed in the literature is conducted, both single- and multiple variable models are considered, as well as different information sets within the quarter. Given the high penetration of ATM/POS technology in Portugal, it becomes a natural case study to assess its information content for tracking private consumption behaviour. We find that ATM/POS data displays better forecast performance than typical indicators, reinforcing the potential usefulness of this novel type of data among policymakers and practitioner.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".