In this article, Evan F. Koenig demonstrates that the Federal Reserve Board's initial estimate of manufacturing capacity utilization is helpful in predicting subsequent growth in manufacturing output. Together with lagged real-time output growth and growth in the composite index of leading...

Many policymakers and financial market participants use the Federal Reserve's industrial capacity utilization rate as an indicator of future changes in inflation. During the past few years, however, the usefulness of the utilization rate as an inflation indicator has come under scrutiny. ; In...

When economists are concerned that the economy may be about to change direction, one of the indicators to which they give special scrutiny is the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), released monthly by the Institute for Supply Management. This article discusses the construction and...

The Houston economy went from boom to bust to recovery during the 1980s. Expectations of oil prices at $50 per barrel and higher in the late 70s and early 80s stimulated hundreds of oil-related projects in the area. An oil-price decline, however, led the Houston economy into a sharp recession...