Author: Nikos Askitas

Toll Index March 2023: border crossing lorries down 6% on last March!

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Starting in July 2018 the BAG – Bundesamt für Güterverkehr introduced yet another policy change which affected how lorries pay tolls within the MAUT system as well as the data that come out of this process which are used for computing the Toll Index. The change expanded the network of roads in which toll is due by adding all bundesstraßen to it.
While in the long run this is bound to make the Toll Index more accurate this introduced a discontinuity. The BAG even had difficulty producing the numbers timely for about year. After July 2019 we can report year on year changes for each month (with a missing value in 2018 for all months from July to December and a missing value in 2019 for all months from January to June.
The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):
Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.
The German statistical office, in cooperation with the Bundesamt für Güterverkehr,  has taken the MAUT data in its portfolio of data products and their efforts can be found here. The Destatis document describing the data is here and here is their publication calendar for 2019.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).

Workshop “Stata meets Python”

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At this year’s German Stata Conference (June 15-16, Humboldt University, Berlin) I will be teaching a workshop titled “Stata meets Python”.

What is it about?

Attendants will learn how to use the Python integration facilities that Stata has made available in order to embed Python code in Stata (since version 16) or Stata code in Python (since version 17). Stata calls this integration collectively PyStata. It includes among other ingredients a pystata python package written by Stata (which enables embedding of Stata code in Python) as well as the sfi module – Stata Function Interface (SFI) which can be used to access Stata’s current dataset, frames, macros, scalars, matrices, value lables, global Mata matrices etc.

Why should you attend?

Both languages have large lively communities which create user written programs with little overlap. The integration doubles the amount of ammunition you can throw at data problems.

The Program can be found on Stata’s own website as well as on the official conference page.


Toll Index February 2023

Posted on

Starting in July 2018 the BAG – Bundesamt für Güterverkehr introduced yet another policy change which affected how lorries pay tolls within the MAUT system as well as the data that come out of this process which are used for computing the Toll Index. The change expanded the network of roads in which toll is due by adding all bundesstraßen to it.
While in the long run this is bound to make the Toll Index more accurate this introduced a discontinuity. The BAG even had difficulty producing the numbers timely for about year. After July 2019 we can report year on year changes for each month (with a missing value in 2018 for all months from July to December and a missing value in 2019 for all months from January to June.
The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):
Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.
The German statistical office, in cooperation with the Bundesamt für Güterverkehr,  has taken the MAUT data in its portfolio of data products and their efforts can be found here. The Destatis document describing the data is here and here is their publication calendar for 2019.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).

Toll Index January 2023 – slow start

Posted on

Starting in July 2018 the BAG – Bundesamt für Güterverkehr introduced yet another policy change which affected how lorries pay tolls within the MAUT system as well as the data that come out of this process which are used for computing the Toll Index. The change expanded the network of roads in which toll is due by adding all bundesstraßen to it.
While in the long run this is bound to make the Toll Index more accurate this introduced a discontinuity. The BAG even had difficulty producing the numbers timely for about year. After July 2019 we can report year on year changes for each month (with a missing value in 2018 for all months from July to December and a missing value in 2019 for all months from January to June.
The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):

Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.

The German statistical office, in cooperation with the Bundesamt für Güterverkehr,  has taken the MAUT data in its portfolio of data products and their efforts can be found here. The Destatis document describing the data is here and here is their publication calendar for 2019.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).

Toll Index December 2022

Posted on

Starting in July 2018 the BAG – Bundesamt für Güterverkehr introduced yet another policy change which affected how lorries pay tolls within the MAUT system as well as the data that come out of this process which are used for computing the Toll Index. The change expanded the network of roads in which toll is due by adding all bundesstraßen to it.
While in the long run this is bound to make the Toll Index more accurate this introduced a discontinuity. The BAG even had difficulty producing the numbers timely for about year. After July 2019 we can report year on year changes for each month (with a missing value in 2018 for all months from July to December and a missing value in 2019 for all months from January to June.
The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):

Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.

The German statistical office, in cooperation with the Bundesamt für Güterverkehr,  has taken the MAUT data in its portfolio of data products and their efforts can be found here. The Destatis document describing the data is here and here is their publication calendar for 2019.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).

Toll Index November 2022

Posted on

Starting in July 2018 the BAG – Bundesamt für Güterverkehr introduced yet another policy change which affected how lorries pay tolls within the MAUT system as well as the data that come out of this process which are used for computing the Toll Index. The change expanded the network of roads in which toll is due by adding all bundesstraßen to it.
While in the long run this is bound to make the Toll Index more accurate this introduced a discontinuity. The BAG even had difficulty producing the numbers timely for about year. After July 2019 we can report year on year changes for each month (with a missing value in 2018 for all months from July to December and a missing value in 2019 for all months from January to June.
The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):

Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.

The German statistical office, in cooperation with the Bundesamt für Güterverkehr,  has taken the MAUT data in its portfolio of data products and their efforts can be found here. The Destatis document describing the data is here and here is their publication calendar for 2019.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).

Toll Index October 2022

Posted on

Starting in July 2018 the BAG – Bundesamt für Güterverkehr introduced yet another policy change which affected how lorries pay tolls within the MAUT system as well as the data that come out of this process which are used for computing the Toll Index. The change expanded the network of roads in which toll is due by adding all bundesstraßen to it.
While in the long run this is bound to make the Toll Index more accurate this introduced a discontinuity. The BAG even had difficulty producing the numbers timely for about year. After July 2019 we can report year on year changes for each month (with a missing value in 2018 for all months from July to December and a missing value in 2019 for all months from January to June.
The Toll Index was first proposed in IZA DP5522 which was published in the Journal of Forecasting. It has been widely covered in national and international media (selection):

Focus Magazin,
Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
Financial Times,
MoneyWeek,
WirtschaftsWoche,
CNN International,
DRS3 Swiss public radio,
Deutsche Welle.

The German statistical office, in cooperation with the Bundesamt für Güterverkehr,  has taken the MAUT data in its portfolio of data products and their efforts can be found here. The Destatis document describing the data is here and here is their publication calendar for 2019.

Citation: “Nowcasting business cycles using toll data.” Journal of Forecasting 32:4 (2013): 299–306(with K. F. Zimmermann).