A comparison of the real-time performance of business cycle dating methods
By: by Marcelle Chauvet and Jeremy M. Piger.
Contributors: Piger, Jeremy Max.; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Series: Working paper ;; 2005-021A; Working paper (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis : Online) ;; 2005-021A.
Publisher: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Published: 2005
Place of publication: [St. Louis, Mo.]
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Business cycles -- United States -- Mathematical models.
Description: "This paper evaluates the ability of formal rules to establish U.S. business cycle turning point dates in real time.  We consider two approaches, a nonparametric algorithm and a parametric Markov-switching dynamic-factor model.  In order to accurately assess the real-time performance of these rules, we construct a new unrevised "real-time" data set of employment, industrial production, manufacturing and trade sales, and personal income.  We then apply the rules to this data set to simulate the accuracy and timeliness with which they would have identified the NBER business cycle chronology had they been used in real time for the past 30 years.  Both approaches accurately identified the NBER dated turning points in the sample in real time, with no instances of false positives.  Further, both approaches, and especially the Markov-switching model, yielded significant improvement over the NBER in the speed with which business cycle troughs were identified.  In addition to suggesting that business cycle dating rules are an informative tool to use alongside the traditional NBER analysis, these results provide formal evidence regarding the speed with which macroeconomic data reveals information about new business cycle phases"--Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 7/1/2005.
Also available in print.
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Mode of access: World Wide Web.