In this paper a new method of constructing the leading economic index is presented. Its main advantage is the ability to distinguish domestic and foreign factors influencing the growth of economy and it is performed via dynamic hierarchical factor modelling. An application is carried out with...

Since 1991, survey expectations of long-run output growth for the U.S. relative to the rest of the world exhibit a pattern strikingly similar to that of the U.S. current account, and thus also to global imbalances. We show that this finding can to a large extent be rationalized in a two-region...