In this paper we analyze the power of various indicators to predict growth rates of aggregate production using real-time data. In addition, we assess their ability to predict turning points of the economy. We consider four groups of indicators: survey data, composite indicators, real economic...

With the increasing importance of the service-providing sectors, information from these sectors has become essential to the understanding of contemporary business cycles. This paper explores the usefulness of the transportation services output index (TSI) as an additional coincident indicator in...

The financial crisis of 200709 has highlighted the importance of developments in financial conditions for real economic activity. The authors estimate the effect of current and past shocks to financial variables on U.S. GDP growth by constructing two growthbased financial conditions indexes...

We reassess the predictability of U.S. recessions at horizons from three months to two years ahead for a large number of previously proposed leading-indicator variables. We employ an efficient probit estimator for partially missing data and assess relative model performance based on the receiver...

We extend the work done in our “Redux” paper from Oct 2011 to find a weighted composite U.S coincident economic index (CEI) that includes non-zero weightings from all 50 states and when used in a standard Probit model, produces a perfect correlation (R2 of 1) to NBER recession dating. We...

Financial indicators such as yield curves and stock prices have been extensively used as leading indicators of economic activity due to their forward looking content. Indeed, the Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the United States, a widely used forecasting tool for business cycle turning points,...

This paper analyses to what extent a selection of leading indicators is able to forecast U.S. recessions, by means of both dynamic probit models and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models, using monthly data from January 1871 to June 2016. The results suggest that the probit models predict U.S....

Labor market indicators are critical for policymakers, but measurement error in labor force survey data is known to be substantial. In this paper, I quantify the implications of classification errors in the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), in which respondents misreport their true labor...

This study investigates job search activity in the United States by constructing a set of sectoral job search activity indices based on Internet search volumes. The indices are positively associated with countercyclical labour market measures, including unemployment and layoff rates, but are...

In this paper we analyze the power of various indicators to predict growth rates of aggregate production using real-time data. In addition, we assess their ability to predict turning points of the economy. We consider four groups of indicators: survey data, composite indicators, real economic...