A monthly output index for the US Transportation sector over January 1979-June 2003 is reported covering air, rail, water, truck, transit and pipeline activities. Separate indexes for freight and passenger are also constructed. The strong cyclical movements observed in the transportation output...

This paper studies the business cycle features of the transportation sector using dynamic factor models. The transportation reference cycles peak ahead of the economic cycles, but lag by a few months at troughs. The asymmetric relationship between these two suggests the usefulness of...

The joint subjective probabilities for negative GDP growth during two consecutive quarters obtained from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) are evaluated as predictors of cyclical downturns in the economy using the prequential approach of Dawid (1984) and the skill score decomposition...