Predicting cycles in economic activity is one of the more challenging but important aspects of economic forecasting. This paper reports the results from estimation of binary probit models that predict the probability of an economy being in a recession using a variety of financial and real...

I construct two daily, real-time, real activity indexes for the United States, Euro area, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan: (i) a surprise index that summarizes recent economic data surprises and measures optimism/pessimism about the state of the economy, and (ii) an uncertainty index that...

We employ artificial neural networks using macro-financial variables to predict recessions. We model the relationship between indicator variables and recessions 1 to 10 periods into the future and employ a procedure that penalizes a misclassified recession more than a misclassified...