We provide a summary updated guide for the construction, use and evaluation of leading indicators, and an assessment of the most relevant recent developments in this field of economic forecasting. To begin with, we analyse the problem of selecting a target coincident variable for the leading...

This paper investigates the accuracy and heterogeneity of output growth and inflation forecasts during the current and the four preceding NBER-dated U.S. recessions. We generate forecasts from six different models of the U.S. economy and compare them to professional forecasts from the Federal...

Typical analyses of trends and cycles take as given some (one) observable economic variable in whose time path a researcher wishes to find trend and cycle movements. But individual sectors and regions in aggregate economies move neither perfectly with nor independently of each other -- why is it...

In this paper we argue that modelling the trend component in real GNP as a random walk is inconsistent with its interpretation as productivity growth. As an alternative we specify the trend as an Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) process, whose impulse response function follows...

Forecasting models for output are presented to throw light on monetary transmission. Recent research finds multistep forecasting superior to recursive forecasting from a VAR model when structural breaks are present; there are important political and policy regime breaks in South Africa. The...

This Paper uses multi-step forecasting models at horizons of 4 and 8 quarters to forecast and explain the growth of real per capita US GDP. In the modeling strategy, a priori sign restrictions play an important role. They are imposed not on impulse response functions but directly on the reduced...

This Paper reviews recent econometric work on factor models in large cross-sections of time series. In this literature, traditional factor analysis is adapted to develop parsimonious estimation methods for high dimension time series models. The review covers problems of consistency and rates –...

A continuous monitoring of the evolution of the economy is fundamental for the decisions of public and private decision makers. This paper proposes a new monthly indicator of the euro area real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with several original features. First, it considers both the output side...

We provide methods for forecasting variables and predicting turning points in panel Bayesian VARs. We specify a flexible model that accounts for both interdependencies in the cross section and time variations in the parameters. Posterior distributions for the parameters are obtained for...

This paper examines the performance of alternative models for predicting turning points in the UK growth cycle. The models are based upon an interpretation of movements in the CSO's composite longer and shorter leading indicators. The difference between the models lies in the choice of method...