Cyclical indicators have hitherto been used as a means of describing the state of the economy on a month by month basis. However, they have proved unsatisfactory for a number of reasons and are now no longer published. This paper summarises a means of producing monthly estimates of GDP from...

Cyclical indicators have hitherto been used as a means of describing the state of the economy on a month by month basis. However, they have proved unsatisfactory for a number of reasons and are now no longer published. This paper summarises a means of producing monthly estimates of GDP from...

The business cycle has an importance in the popular debate which can tend to run ahead of the problems in measuring it. This paper provides a survey of the main statistical techniques that are used to measure the cycle. An application to the UK illustrates that the choice of what measure, or...

Recent estimates suggest that the UK business cycle is closer to the Euro zone business cycle than it was in the early 1990s. This paper investigates whether this phenomenon has been accompanied by increased correlation between UK and Eurozone business cycles. Considering a range of alternative...

This paper has three aims. First, we summarise and thereby make readily available the historical time-series of quarterly density forecasts of year ahead RPIX (RPI excluding mortgage payments) inflation made by the National Institute for the period 1994Q1-2004Q4. Previous work has focused on...

For more than four decades, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) has conducted a two-question, quarterly survey of architect forecasts of public and private sector construction expenditure. This qualitative survey is published one week after the end of each quarter and nine...

Leading indicators are produced by both the OECD and the UK Office of National Statistics as tools for predicting turning points of the business cycle. An assessment on the basis of performance at turning points is frustrated by their scarcity. It is found that the indicators generally have...