This paper studies the business cycle features of the transportation sector using dynamic factor models. The transportation reference cycles peak ahead of the economic cycles, but lag by a few months at troughs. The asymmetric relationship between these two suggests the usefulness of...

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...

Transportation plays a central role in facilitating economic activities across sectors and between regions, and is thus essential to business cycle research. Using four coincident indicators representing different aspects of the transportation sector that include an index of transportation...

A monthly output index for the US Transportation sector over January 1979-June 2003 is reported covering air, rail, water, truck, transit and pipeline activities. Separate indexes for freight and passenger are also constructed. The strong cyclical movements observed in the transportation output...

We develop a monthly output index of the U.S. Transportation sector over 1980:1-2002:4 covering air, rail, water, truck, transit and pipeline activities. Separate indexes for freight and passenger are also constructed. Our total transportation output index matches very well with the annual...

This paper studies the business cycle features of the transportation sector using dynamic factor models. The transportation reference cycles peak ahead of the economic cycles, but lag by a few months at troughs. The asymmetric relationship between these two suggests the usefulness of...

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...

This article examines the effectiveness of a subjective probability approach to quantify three-category qualitative responses from expectations surveys. Since one cannot make a judgment on the validity of estimated expectations by comparing them with ex post outcomes, the authors use the...