Assessing the state of an economy is not an easy task and generally involves interpreting myriad and sometimes contradictory indicators. In 2007 the authors unveiled a dynamic common factor model, dubbed the D6 Factor, for the economy of the Sixth Federal Reserve District. This model combined...

Central banks regularly monitor select financial and macroeconomic variables in order to obtain early indication of the impact of monetary policies. This practice is discussed on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York website, for example, where one particular set of macroeconomic "indicators" is...

Diffusion index models have received considerable attention from both theoreticians and empirical econometricians in recent years. One reason for this is that datasets with many variables are increasingly becoming available and being utilized for economic modelling, and another is that common...