This paper examines the forecasting performance of various leading economic indicators and composite indexes since 1988. in particular during the onset of the 1990 recession. The primary focus is on an experimental recession index (tile "XRI"). a composite index which provides probabilistic...

This paper examines the problem of measuring the growth of a monetary aggregate in the presence of innovations in financial markets and changes in the relationship between individual assets and output. We propose constructing a monetary aggregate so that it is a good leading indicator of nominal...

The Index of Coincident Economic Indicators, currently compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce, is designed to measure the state of overall economic activity. The index is constructed as a weighted average of four key macroeconomic time series, where the weights are obtained using rules that...