Designing a contemporaneity index: Detecting regional similarities in South America, 1961–2018

DELBIANCO, FERNANDO; FIORITI, ANDRÉS; TOHMÉ, FERNANDO

Regional Statistics

Hungarian Central Statistical Office

Lugar: Budapest; Año: 2023 vol. 13 p. 634 - 650

This study present an operationalcharacterization of contemporaneity amongvariables based on the transformation of theircorresponding time series into symbolic onesby applying either a Markov switchingapproach or the symbolic aggregateapproximation method. Then, the authorsextract vectors from the resulting symbolictime series, characterizing the pattern ofchange or permanence in time. The scalarproduct between the vectors correspondingto two variables yields the index ofcontemporaneity between them. The studyapply this method to detect a ranking ofsynchronic patterns of evolution of grossdomestic product (GDP) and investmentbetween several South American economies.