The Scottish economy [December 1991]

This detailed article provides an analysis of key Scottish economic trends based on recent data. The forecast of quarterly movements in the seasonally-adjusted Scottish output index for production industries (Divisions 1-4 of the 1980 SIC) is based on the short-term model of the Scottish economy, details of which are contained in the Briefing Paper in the September issue of the Commentary. Note that here the classification of production industries excludes construction but includes SIC Class 13 (oil and gas). As a reminder, the current Scottish output is modelled as driven by the current and past UK outputs, and also by the past Scottish output. In making the Scottish forecasts, the exogenous data on the UK output index for the forecast period are derived from the National Institute's projections. Since the quarterly forecasts for the UK output beyond the fourth quarter of 1992 are not yet available, the present forecasting period remains the same as that in the last issue. However, the output equation is reestimated using the revised official data on the UK and Scottish output series. Therefore, the difference between the present forecasts and that in the last issue is totally due to data revision