ESTIMATING INDEXES OF COINCIDENT AND LEADING INDICATORS FOR BARBADOS

In recent times, a number of studies have focused on describing and modelling the business cycles of developing countries. However, to date very few of the small economies of the Caribbean have been the subject of this type of empirical application. In this regard, the current paper's contribution is to conduct an analysis of the cyclical fluctuations in Barbados, focusing on the prediction of such fluctuations. To this end, the authors construct coincident and leading indicators for the Barbadian economy, using the Stock and Watson (1989, 1991) method, as well as another alternative procedure (Mongardini and Saadi-Sedik, 2003) derived thereof. The results obtained show that the proposed indicators possess excellent properties and accurately reflect the reference cycle of the Barbadian economy.