Developing spatio-temporal approach to predict economic dynamics based on online news

Abstract Economic forecasting is a scientific decision-making tool, and it is one of the important basis for the government to formulate economic plans, predict the implementation of the plan, and guide the implementation of the plan. Current knowledge about the use of online news in the prediction of economic patterns in China is limited, especially considering the spatio-temporal dynamics over time. This study explored the spatio-temporal patterns of economic output values in Yinzhou, Ningbo, China between 2018 and 2021, and proposed generalized linear model (GLM) and Geographically weighted regression (GWR) model to predict the dynamics using online news data. The results indicated that there were spatio-temporal variations in the economic dynamics in the study area. The online news showed a great potential to predict economic dynamics, with better performance in the GWR model. The findings suggested online news combining with spatio-temporal approach can better forecast economic dynamics, which can be seen as a pre-requisite for developing an online news-based surveillance system The advanced spatio-temporal analysis enables governments to garner insights about the patterns of economic dynamics over time, which may enhance the ability of government to formulate economic plans and to predict the implementation of the plan. The proposed model may be extended to greater geographic area to validate such approach.