Estimating Quarterly GDP for the Interwar UK Economy: An Application to the Employment Function

Chow and Lin (1971) set out a procedure for the generation of higher frequency estimates for series for which data is available at a low frequency using data on a related series at the higher frequency. In this paper we set out a simple algorithm for the generation of quarterly estimates for a series for which annual data is available and quarterly data is available for the related series. We apply this to data for interwar Gross Domestic Product using Industrial Production as the related series. Using this approach we generate quarterly GDP figures for the period 1920.1 to 1938.4. This series is valuable in that it can be used to estimate a cointegrating relationship between employment, real wages and aggregate output which is not possible when we use industrial production directly as our quarterly measure of aggregate demand.