The FNI-index for the Norwegian economy in September: Growth increases further in the third quarter

The FNI-index for September confirms that growth is picking up also in the third quarter of the year, but with numbers for July and August being slightly higher than for September.

The FNI-index has been updated for September

The FNI (Financial News Index) index, that is constructed by Retriever and the CAMP-centre at BI Norwegian Business School was last updated on September 30, this year. Overall, the FNI-index confirms the impression that the downturn following the oil price decline (starting over two years ago) is behind us. The Norwegian economy, measured by FNI, is recovering fast, with growth rates above average also in the third quarter. Furthermore, the FNI-index signals that the increased activity observed in the second quarter increases further in third quarter, but with some variation within the quarter: The numbers for July and August being slightly higher than for September. The most prominent topics that contribute to increase the index are IT, technology and startup, while topics such as retail and oil service still contribute to pull the FNI-index slightly down.

About the FNI index

Retriever and Centre for Applied Macro and Petroleum economics (CAMP) at BI Norwegian Business School have started a collaboration to construct a business cycle indicator for the Norwegian economy. The new index, called FNI (Financial News Index), measures the development of the Norwegian economy on a daily basis, and will be published monthly. The FNI-index is constructed based on daily news articles, from many sources. The news will be decomposed into different topics. These will, together with GDP, be used to construct a daily business cycle index. The central idea behind the index is simple: To the extent that newspapers provide a relevant description of the economy, the more intensive a given topic is represented in the newspaper at a given point in time, the more likely it is that this topic represents something of importance for the economy's current and future needs and developments.

The average value of the FNI-index is zero. Progressively bigger positive values indicate progressively better-than-average business cycle conditions. Conversely, progressively more negative values indicate progressively worse-than-average conditions.

For more information, see here: https://www.retriever-info.com/fni/

The next FNI update is Wednesday, November 8, 2017.

Contact/press

Professor Hilde C. Bjørnland, BI Norwegian Business School, +47 464 10 767

Country manager Espen Viskjer, Retriever +47 915 52 765

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Published: 2017.10.06

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