In this chapter we provide a guide for the construction, use and evaluation of leading indicators, and an assessment of the most relevant recent developments in this field of economic forecasting. To begin with, we analyze the problem of indicator selection, choice of filtering methods, business...

This paper presents a new composite leading indicator for the Swiss business cycle corresponding to the growth cycle concept. It is the result of another complete overhaul of the KOF Economic Barometer that has been published by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute on a monthly basis since 1976. In...

The objective of this study is to develop a system of leading indicators of the business cycle turning points for a wide range of countries, including Russia, over a period of more than thirty years. We use a binary choice model with the dependent variable of the state of economy: the recession,...

In this paper, we attempt to analyse the relationship between house price dynamics and the business cycle. Employing a time-varying transition probability Markov switching framework, we provide empirical evidence that house price growth may prove a useful leading indicator for turning point...

This paper analyses the business cycle properties of 183 time series relevant to the Italian economy. We propose new monthly coincident and leading composite indicators for the Italian business cycle. On the methodological side, the study follows a schema for constructing cyclical indicators on...

In the wake of the recent international economic recession in 2008-2009, forecasting methods designed to anticipate business cycles have been widely revisited. Recent innovative econometric methods were presented and widely discussed by academics and economists from international and national...

This paper develops a sufficient-statistic formula for the unemployment gap-the difference between the actual unemployment rate and the efficient unemployment rate. While lowering unemployment puts more people into work, it forces firms to post more vacancies and to devote more resources to...

Zusammenfassung Untersuchungen zur Prognosegüte sollten nicht nur Prognosefehler, die auf der Schätzung der Parameter beruhen berücksichtigen, sondern auch solche, die aus der stichprobenabhängigen Auswahl des Prognosemodells resultieren. Wird die Prognosefehlervarianz durch rekursive...