This paper establishes a reference chronology for the Russian economic cycle from the early 1980s to mid-2015. To detect peaks and troughs, we tested nine monthly indices as reference series, three methods of seasonal adjustments (X-12-ARIMA, TRAMO/SEATS, and CAMPLET), and four methods for...

There is evidence in the economic literature that professional forecasters are unsuccessful in predicting recessions, but the reasons for these failures are still not clear. Meanwhile, this phenomenon has been little studied on the basis of quarterly estimates for various target horizons. We...

There is evidence in the economic literature that near cyclical peaks an optimistic bias exists in private expert forecasts of real GDP growth rates. Other evidence concerns differences in the accuracy of GDP forecasts made during expansions and those made during contractions. It has also been...

Regional statistics published by the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) are reviewed in terms of quality, and radical disagreement between “month-on-month” and “year-on-year” monthly statistics is identified. In view of this, an original method is proposed for estimating...

The cyclical indicators approach has been used for decades but the last recession has once more rekindled an interest for them throughout the world. Several new techniques and indicators were introduced in recent years but the actual quality of these ‘newcomers‘ was not well established....

Contemporary global economic life is measured in days and hours, but most common economic indicators have inevitable lags of months and sometimes quarters (GDP). Moreover, the real-time picture of economic dynamics may differ in some sense from the same picture in its historical perspective,...