Stress Testing in Statistical Modeling of Business Activity in Conditions of Market Shocks

The authors proposed an original method of stress testing in statistical modeling of business activity based on the results of business tendency surveys to study possible scenarios for the development triggered by external unforeseen supply and demand shocks, as in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article also provides an overview of existing approaches in the field of stress testing and the construction of stress indices with an emphasis on methods based on vector autoregressive models and their various modifications. Thus, the article aims to adapt existing methods of macro-level stress testing for their use based on the results of business tendency surveys.

The basis for empirical calculations was the data from business tendency surveys of the leaders of Russian manufacturing enterprises, reflecting their combined estimates of the current state of business activity. The methods used in the article included: firstly, the formation of four composite indices based on the results of business tendency surveys from 2008 to March 2020, reflecting various aspects of business activity of enterprises (demand index, production index, financial index and employment index); secondly, the construction of the BVAR (Bayesian vector autoregression) model and its application for studying and comparing various forecast scenarios of index reactions to market shocks.

The results of the study, forecasts of the dynamics of indices were obtained as a reaction to four possible shock scenarios: short-term, V-, W-, and U-shaped. Moreover, for each of the scenarios, cases of shocks from the side of demand, production and their simultaneous impact are presented.

The conclusions based on the results of this study point to the key role of demand in the dynamics of all the considered indices and to the relatively greater sensitivity of the employment index in relation to the demand index and the finance index in relation to the production index. W-shaped shock was the worst of the four scenarios considered.

Conclusions based on the study results indicate the vital role of demand in the dynamics of all the indices under consideration, the Wshaped shock, as the worst of the considered scenarios, as well as the relatively higher sensitivity of the employment index to the demand index and the finance index to the production index.

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