The paper introduces a two-factor model of the common leading and coincident economic indicators. Both factors are unobserved and each of them captures the dynamics of a corresponding group of the observed time series. The common leading factor is assumed to Granger-cause the common coincident...

Composite economic indicator is a very useful tool designed to trace and predict the business cycle conditions. In this paper we study possible extensions of this approach intended to cope with the potential data problems caused by various structural breaks affecting both level and volatility of...

The analysis and prediction of the short-run economic dynamics, or the evolution of the business cycle, often require a construction of the composite economic indicator (CEI). This indicator may be endowed with nonlinear dynamics to take care of the possible asymmetries between different phases...

This papers develops a dynamic factor models with regime switching to account for the decreasing volatility of the U.S. economy observed since the mid-1980s. Apart from the Markov switching capturing the cyclical fluctuations, an additional type of regime switching is introduced to allow...

In this paper, we consider a coincident economic indicator model with regime-switching dynamics and with the time series observed at different frequencies, for instance, at monthly and quarterly frequencies. Until now the only solution was to drop the lower frequency series and to estimate the...

In this paper we identify and try to predict the turning points of the Japanese business cycle. As a measure of the business cycle we use a composite economic indicator (CEI). This indicator is endowed with nonlinear dynamics to capture the asymmetries between different cyclical phases. Two...