Financial cycles can be important drivers of real activity, but there is scant evidence about how well they signal recession risks. We run a horse race between the term spread - the most widely used indicator in the literature - and a range of financial cycle measures. Unlike most papers, ours...

Financial cycle booms can end in crises and, even if they do not, they tend to weaken growth. Given their slow build-up, do they convey information about recession risk? We compare the predictive performance of different financial cycle proxies with that of the term spread - a popular recession...