Should transportation output be included as part of the coincident indicators system?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. 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 determining the peaks and troughs of U.S. economy. The index represents a service sector that plays a central role in facilitating economic activities between sectors and across regions, and can be useful in monitoring the current state of the economy. We evaluate the marginal contribution of the TSI in identifying cyclical turning points in the context of four currently used NBER indicators. The TSI is found to have advantages over the composite index of coincident indicators in identifying turning points, and has been of critical importance in recent recessions. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Code: E320, C100.

Creating and assessing composite indicators: Dynamic applications for the port industry and seaborne trade

“…shown (Lahiri and Yao, 2012) that the TSI has a significant marginal contribution compared with the NBER four-indicator system, PSI could provide additional value added information with respect to the propagation of sector and regional shocks to the national economy. The latter is also supported by the proposed Transportation-Driven GDP, introduced in Han and Fang (2000), where mining, manufacturing and trade are identified as the sectors with a significant portion of their value (defined here as >15%) originating from transportation.…”

“…Inspiration of this work is, as its structure two-fold: Firstly the stream of work on the development and utilization of the U.S Transportation Services Index in Lahiri et al (2003aLahiri et al ( , 2003bLahiri et al ( , 2012, Lahiri and Yao (2004a, 2004b, Lahiri (2010a, Brady et al (2006) and the reports of Young et al (2007Young et al ( , 2009, and the major motivation being the feasibility of applying and adjusting this concepts to ports and trade. This endeavor led, eventually, to the prospect of factor-based modeling of port and trade related variables, which in turn led to contemporary approximate and generalized dynamic factor methodologies of Watson (2002a, 2002b) and Forni et al (2000Forni et al ( , 2005 respectively.…”

“…Furthermore the authors argued for the superiority of the monthly TSI regarding the reflection of cyclical movements, against alternative annual indicators such as the U.S Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) industry output indicators. In Lahiri and Yao (2012) it is concluded that the TSI has a significant marginal contribution compared with the then-existing NBER indicator mix and argue for the inclusion of TSI in the NBER coincident indicator system.…”

“…The under-representation of transportation indexes was addressed in a course of several years mainly by a stream of work related to the development and application of Transportation Services Index in Lahiri et al (2003aLahiri et al ( , 2003bLahiri et al ( , 2012, Lahiri and Yao (2004a, 2004b, Lahiri (2010a, Brady et al (2006) and Young et al (2007Young et al ( , 2009 who contributed to the definition, creation and case development for the TSI, a monthly aggregate output composite indicator. TSI is now maintained and utilized by the U.S Department of Transport.…”

Application of NPP/Viirs Night Satellite Images for the Assessment of the Economic Crisis in the East of Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk Regions)

“…The next five figures show the behavior of these variables and total retail electricity sales six months before, during, and six months after recessions using spider charts (Lahiri and Yao, 2012). In these charts the value of each series is normalized to 100 at the peak of the business cycle as determined by the NBER committee (NBER, 2014).…”