What Do the Leading Indicators Lead?

Abstract

The authors find that the composite leading index (CLI) is useful for forecasting gross national product (GNP), both in sample and in an out-of-sample real-time exercise. They propose a nonlinear specification in which cyclical shifts of the CLI precede those in GNP. However, the authors find that better forecasts are provided by a simple linear relation between current GNP growth and the growth rate of the CLI during the previous quarter along with an error-correction term corresponding to the previous quarter's logarithmic difference between the level of the CLI and the level of GNP. Copyright 1996 by University of Chicago Press.