Analysts are looking beyond traditional statistics for new and faster ways to measure developments in Russia's economy which is being hammered by economic sanctions, according to a story in «Bloomberg Businessweek» (behind paywall).

Government statistics are generally reported with a lag period of weeks, if not months, from the period for which they are reported. This is fine for long-term time series analysis and general trends, but measuring an economy in close to real-time presents a number of challenges. Still, data is available.

Consumer Spending

Sberbank, Russia's largest lender, has weekly data on consumer transactions. The latest data through March 12, show spending up 20 percent on the week, double the rate prior to the invasion. Gains in goods that are likely to have been imported such as car parts, consumer electronics, furniture and medicines were «especially pronounced,» the report said.

Liam Peach, emerging markets economist at Capital Economic in London says this is because household spending tends to rise sharply ahead of an anticipated drop in the currency. This was the case in previous crises in February 2020 and the end of 2014, and appears to be happening again, according to «Bloomberg.»

Nowcasting

Rather than waiting for official data, so-called «nowcasting» has become increasingly more popular in recent years, and takes into account more recently available data. For example, the Bloomberg Economics GDP «nowcast» for Russia includes oil prices, corporate bond yields, the exchange rate and equity prices in an attempt to gauge economic activity more quickly than with the use of traditional indicators. As of March 10, Bloomberg's Russia nowcast shows the economy having contracted by 2 percent.

Satellite Data

Another source people are using is satellites data to track shipping. «If you want to look at real-time data, that would probably be a pretty good indicator of supply shocks hitting the economy,» Natalia Gurushina, Van Eck Associates chief economist for emerging markets fixed-income strategy told «Bloomberg.»

One of the most important measures for judging economic strength is through employment. The U.S. jobs report is arguably the most important economic indicator in the world. However, measuring employment data is much too difficult in Russia, explains Scott Johnson of Bloomberg Economics.

«Russian companies have tended to retain headcount, either voluntarily or under political pressure. We see a bigger impact on hours worked, and inconveniently the data on hours can come out months after the main employment figures,» he said.

Weekly CPI

Still, there is at least one relatively timely official indicator for Russia. Weekly CPI. According to Bloomberg, the week of March 4 saw a 2.2 percent increase in consumer prices which was the largest weekly jump since 2008. This was followed by a 2.1 percent rise through March 11. 

Reserves Data

One indicator that would have given insight into what the war is costing was international reserves which are reported by the Bank of Russia. In January, the central bank reported international reserves totaling $630.2 billion in its coffers of which foreign exchange reserves comprised $498 billion at the end of January. 

However, the bank announced that the reserve position as of February 18 of $643.2 billion would be the reported figure in all publications for the coming three months. So much for gaining any insights from those data.

Economics

Measuring something as complex as a large economy operating in a global environment is certainly challenging.

Despair.com provides a bit of levity on «economics» through what they call a «demotivational» poster, in which economics is «the science of explaining tomorrow why the predictions you made yesterday didn't come true today.» The company claims a copy of the poster adorns a conference room at the New York Federal Reserve.