A major shortcoming of the U.S. leading index is that it does not use the most recent information for stock prices and yield spreads. The index methodology ignores these data in favor of a time-consistent set of components (i.e., all of the components must refer to the previous month). An...

Effectively predicting cyclical movements in the economy is a major challenge. While there are other approaches to forecasting, the U.S. leading index has long been used to analyze and predict economic fluctuations. We describe and test a new procedure for making the index more timely. The new...

A major shortcoming of the U.S. leading index is that it does not use the most recent information for stock prices and yield spreads. The index methodology ignores these data in favor of a time-consistent set of components (i.e., all of the components must refer to the previous month). An...

A major shortcoming of the U.S. leading index is that it does not use the most recent information for stock prices and yield spreads. The index methodology ignores these data in favor of a time-consistent set of components (i.e., all of the components must refer to the previous month). An...

Effectively predicting cyclical movements in the economy is a major challenge. While there are other approaches to forecasting, the U.S. leading index has long been used to analyze and predict economic fluctuations. We describe and test a new procedure for making the index more timely. The new...

This paper reports real-time out-of-sample tests of the ability of the U.S. Index Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) to forecast the economy using "composition-changing" "as-published" versions of the LEI. It is an extension of recent work that focused on forecasts with a "composition-constant"...

A study of business cycles defined as sequences of expansions and contractions in the level of general economic activity does not require trend estimation and elimination, but a study of growth cycles defined as sequences of high and low growth phases does. Major cyclical slowdowns and booms...

A study of business cycles defined as sequences of expansions and contractions in the level of general economic activity does not require trend estimation and elimination, but a study of growth cycles defined as sequences of high and low growth phases does. Major cyclical slowdowns and booms...