Bangladesh Economic Stress Index
A single reading, from 0 to 100, of how much pressure the Bangladesh economy is under on a given day. It is built from news reports on sixteen parts of the economy, among them foreign exchange, exports, energy and food prices, and it is updated twice a day.
Latest reading
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Channels under the most pressure
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A channel score of 50 means the channel is at the middle of its own history. Higher scores mean recent news on that channel is more strained than usual for that channel.
How the index has moved
The sixteen channels
Each channel follows one part of the economy. The weight shows how much the channel counts in the index, and the number of signals is the count of classified news reports on that channel in the last 60 days. The score compares the channel with its own history, while the direction shows whether the recent signals on balance tighten or ease conditions. A channel can therefore be easing and still score above 50, if it has been easing less than it usually does.
| Channel | Stress score | Net direction | Signals, 60 days | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Recent signals
These are the most recent news reports the system classified with high confidence. Each one is tagged as tightening conditions, which adds to stress, or easing them, which reduces it.
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Reports are classified automatically from their headlines, so an occasional signal will be tagged wrongly. The index is built from many signals, which limits the effect of any single error.
How the index is built
Twice a day, a script collects headlines from Bangladeshi and international news feeds. A language model reads each headline and decides which of the sixteen channels it concerns, whether it points to tighter or easier conditions in that channel, and how confident the reading is. The result is a signal.
A signal counts for less as it gets older, losing half of its weight every 14 days, and signals older than 60 days are dropped. High-confidence signals count three times as much as low-confidence ones, and medium-confidence signals twice as much. For channel c on day t, the net pressure is
Because some channels attract far more news than others, each channel's pressure is then converted into a score from 0 to 100 by ranking it against that channel's own history. A day with no signals in a channel scores 50. The index itself is the weighted average of the channel scores,
A reading of 35 or below is shown as green, 65 or above as red, and anything between as amber. These bands describe stress relative to the index's own history and are not thresholds for a crisis.
What to keep in mind
The index measures news, not outcomes. It is not a forecast of any single variable, and it does not replace the releases of Bangladesh Bank or the Bureau of Statistics.
Classification uses headlines only, so the size of an event is not captured: a report that reserves fell and one that they fell to a twenty-year low are tagged alike, apart from the confidence level. The news feeds lean towards English-language outlets, which means Bangla-only reporting is under-represented.
The channel weights are judgements about how much each part of the economy matters for Bangladesh, and they have not been estimated from outcome data. They are planned to be revisited once the index has at least a year of history. The full reasoning, including the limits above, is set out in the methodology note.
Data and method
- Methodology note (PDF)Construction of the index, the channel weights and the known limitations.
- Daily index (JSON)The composite index for every day since the start, with channel scores for the last 10 days.
- Recent signals (JSON)The classified news reports from the last 10 days, with direction and confidence.
The full history of classified signals and a structured feed are available to institutions. For access, licensing, or questions about the method, write to support@mangroveintel.com.