In this paper we challenge the view that the oil price has lost its influence on economic activity after the mid-1980s. While we concede that typical VAR models put forward in the literature fail to identify oil price shocks that significantly affect aggregate production, we obtain clearly...

This paper discusses various approaches to decompose economic time series into their trend and cyclical components. For over 30 years now, the Deutsche Bundesbank publishes trend-adjusted indicators in its Statistical Supplement 4 entitled ?Seasonally Adjusted Business Statistics? which are...

A reliable leading indicator should possess the following properties: (1) The movements in the indicator series should resemble those in the business cycle reference series. (2) The relation between the reference series and the indicator should be statistically significant and stable over time....

The paper investigates a set of possible leading indicators for Euroland's business cycle using aggregated quarterly data. The theoretical plausibility, the behavior at business cycle turning points and the mean leads are analyzed. Furthermore, evidence from cross-correlations and...

Probit models are employed to evaluate leading indicators for Germany's recessions. The predictive power of leading indicators is found to be lower than assumed in previous studies. Although, monetary variables provide the best predictive power for recessions, survey data and order inflows show...

This paper characterizes the business cycle as a recurring Markov chain for a broad set of developed and developing countries. The objective is to understand differences in cyclical phenomena across a broad range of countries based on the behavior of two key economic times series - industrial...

Ifo-Indikatoren werden auf ihre Vorlaufeigenschaften, auf Granger-Kausalität, die Stabilität der Vorlaufbeziehung und einen Strukturbruch untersucht. Da die Ifo-Reihen noch nicht auf die neue Gliederung der amtlichen Statistik (WZ 93) umgestellt wurden, wird erstmals die Eignung der...

A reliable leading indicator should possess the following properties: (1) The movements in the indicator series should resemble those in the business cycle reference series. (2) The relation between the reference series and the indicator should be statistically significant and stable over time....

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

The introduction of a common monetary policy in eleven European countries increased the need for leading indicators for that area. A reliable leading indicator should possess the following properties: (1) The movements in the indicator series should resemble those in the business cycle reference...