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Predicting US Recessions: Does a Wishful Bias Exist?
Высшая школа экономики
,
2014.
No. 77.
There is evidence in the economic literature that near cyclical peaks an optimistic bias exists in private expert forecasts of real GDP growth rates. Other evidence concerns differences in the accuracy of GDP forecasts made during expansions and those made during contractions. It has also been hypothesized that a wishful bias may hamper the ability to recognize the beginning of a recession in real-time. We tested consensus forecasts of quarterly GDP growth rates taken from SPFs conducted by PhilFed and found that they may be seen as unbiased only for time horizons j=0,1,2; for greater horizons they are over-optimistic. This over-optimism may also be observed for (j=1, 2) for forecasts made at peaks (at these moments the consensus usually points only to a slowdown of the economy but not to a contraction). Lastly, over-optimism may be observed for nowcasts (j=0) during cyclical contractions, including the first two quarters of a recession (in these cases the reality is usually worse than expected). Taken together, all these facts mean that some aversion to predicting US recessions exists. There are two possible reasons for this: a) experts rely too heavily on extrapolations (then changes in medium-long tendencies would be missed in real time); b) there is a wishful bias in forecasts against predicting recessions (this reluctance may be rooted in psychological factors). We give some arguments in favor of the thesis that the second factor is more important.
Smirnov S. V., Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis 2014 No. 1 P. 103-128
This report investigates the predictability of cyclical turning points in Russia. For years, anyone interested in Russia had access to a full set of common tools for business cycle analysis, such as several composite leading indicators, a purchasing managers’ index, enterprise and consumer sentiment indexes, and so on. However, the 2008-09 world financial crisis spread ...
Added: July 18, 2014
Smirnov S. V., Вопросы статистики 2020 Т. 27 № 4 С. 53-65
The article provides a brief overview of the background of constructing composite leading indicators (CLI) for Russia; the paper defines key indicators which currently are calculated and published monthly; they can be put in practice to monitor the Russian economy. The underlying methodological approaches are analyzed, along with their advantages and disadvantages. The importance of ...
Added: August 25, 2020
Pestova A., Вопросы экономики 2013 № 7
The objective of this study is to develop a system of leading indicators of the business cycle turning points on a wide range of countries, including Russia, over a more than thirty years period. We use a binary choice model with the dependent variable of the state of economy: the recession, there is no recession. ...
Added: June 6, 2013
Smirnov S. V., / Высшая школа экономики. Series EC "Economics". 2011. No. 02.
Contemporary global economic life is measured in days and hours, but most common economic indicators have inevitable lags of months and sometimes quarters (GDP). Moreover, the real-time picture of economic dynamics may differ in some sense from the same picture in its historical perspective, because all fluctuations receive their proper weights only in the context ...
Added: August 28, 2012
Pestova A., / Высшая школа экономики. Series EC "Economics". 2014.
The main objective of this paper is to develop leading indicators of business cycle turning points for OECD countries and Russia, in order to reveal common factors of their macroeconomic processes over a long period of time. To predict cycle turning points, leading indicator models with a discrete dependent variable reflecting a business cycle phase ...
Added: February 20, 2014
Smirnov S. V., Kondrashov N. V., Petronevich A., / Высшая школа экономики. Series EC "Economics". 2016. No. 122.
This paper establishes a reference chronology for the Russian economic cycle from the early 1980s to mid-2015. To detect peaks and troughs, we tested nine monthly indices as reference series, three methods of seasonal adjustments (X-12-ARIMA, TRAMO/SEATS, and CAMPLET), and four methods for dating cyclical turning points (local min/max, Bry-Boschan, Harding-Pagan, and Markov-Switching model). As ...
Added: January 22, 2016
Smirnov S. V., Kondrashov N. V., Petronevich A., Экономический журнал Высшей школы экономики 2015 Т. 19 № 4 С. 534-553
At first, we discuss whether the concept of economic cycles is at all applicable to the realities of the Russian economy. As for several subperiods during the last 35 years, it has been not only market but planned and transformed also, this issue is arguable. But in our opinion, all mid-term factors of total economic ...
Added: November 6, 2015
Смирнов С.В., Френкель А. А., Кондрашов Н.В., Вопросы статистики 2016 № 12 С. 29-38
This article proposes an original method for estimating regional economic activity in Russia. It is based on monthly official regional statistics in five main sectors of the Russian economy (industry, construction, retail trade, wholesale trade and paid services) but transforms it into specially constructed dichotomous variables which eliminate an excessive volatility of initial time-series.
Indices of ...
Added: December 19, 2016
Smirnov S. V., / Высшая школа экономики. Series WP2 "Количественный анализ в экономике". 2011. No. 03.
The cyclical indicators approach has been used for decades but the last recession has once more rekindled an interest for them throughout the world. Several new techniques and indicators were introduced in recent years but the actual quality of these ‘newcomers‘ was not well established. During the last recession, performance of such ‘veterans’ as indexes ...
Added: December 26, 2012
Timofeev D. V., / National Research University Higher School of Economics. Series WP BRP "Basic research program". 2015. No. 20.
Russian recession of 2014/2015 began with ruble run and rise of inflation. It is just the opposite of the western-type deflationary slump combined with money hoarding. Does it mean that Russians need different micro-model to describe saving and consumption behavior? This study show that work-horse log-linearized rational SDF with CRRA utility still provides good explanation ...
Added: November 20, 2015
Pestova A., / Высшая школа экономики. Series WP BRP "Economics/EC". 2015. No. WP BRP 94/EC/2015.
In this paper, I develop the leading indicators of the business cycle turning points exploiting the quarterly panel dataset comprising OECD countries and Russia over the 1980-2013 period. Contrasting to the previous studies, I combine data on OECD countries and Russia into a single dataset and develop universal models suitable for the entire sample with ...
Added: May 5, 2015
Smirnov S. V., Олейник Е. Б., Коваленко С. С., Вопросы экономики 2023 № 10 С. 75-97
In recent decades, predicting turning points of economic cycles (their peaks and troughs) using leading indicators has established itself as a fairly simple, clear and at the same time reliable method. But the world experience has shown that any system of leading indicators requires revision and clarification from time to time. The recent non-economic shocks ...
Added: October 25, 2023
Smirnov S. V., Kondrashov N. V., / Высшая школа экономики. Series EC "Economics". 2017. No. 169.
Regional statistics published by the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) are reviewed in terms of quality, and radical disagreement between “month-on-month” and “year-on-year” monthly statistics is identified. In view of this, an original method is proposed for estimating the level of Regional Economic Activity (REA), based on monthly official regional statistics in five key ...
Added: August 9, 2017
Евгений Гавриленков, Антон Струченевский, Эффективное антикризисное управление 2013 № 4 С. 22-27
Макроэкономическая статистика в июне была разочаровывающей, производство в базовых отраслях (промышленность, сельское хозяйство, строительство, транспорт, розничная и оптовая торговля, по которым можно судить о помесячной динамике ВВП) сократилось на 0,9 % по сравнению с аналогичным периодом 2012 года. В результате рост за второй квартал 2013 года составил всего 0,2 % по сравнению с аналогичным периодом ...
Added: August 26, 2014
Smirnov S. V., / Высшая школа экономики. Series WP2 "Количественный анализ в экономике". 2013. No. 01.
This paper demonstrates that cyclical movements of major industrial market groups (durable and nondurable consumer products, equipment, materials and supplies) have important peculiarities in Russia and in the US. It allows a better understanding of business cycles in national economies determined with their specific structural features. Based on a statistical analysis of monthly indexes ...
Added: May 13, 2013
Kitrar L. A., Ostapkovich G. V., Вопросы статистики 2013 № 12 С. 23-34
This article analyze the usability of compositional indicators of market monitoring for expending the frame of traditional cyclicity of economic activity, review of use of compositional indicators throw the example of various countries and international organizations is presented. Key selection criteria for market monitoring indicators, that are used along with quantitative statistics for joined ...
Added: January 10, 2014
Smirnov S. V., Экономический журнал Высшей школы экономики 2012 № 4 С. 479-513
В статье исследуется вопрос о том, насколько предсказуемыми являются начало и конец рецессии. На протяжении последних десяти с лишним лет для России были легко доступны практически все общеупотребительные инструменты анализа делового цикла: несколько версий сводного опережающего индекса, индекс менеджеров по снабжению, индексы предпринимательских и потребительских настроений и т.д. Тем не менее мировой кризис 2008–2009 гг. ...
Added: January 22, 2013
Gavrilenkov E., Stroutchenevski A., Konygin S., M. : Sberbank CIB, 2014
> Poland. The Polish economy is growing like a DM economy, while Bulgaria is still searching for a new growth model. Unlike many other countries, Poland was able to avoid recession in 2008-09, and it continues to demonstrate sustainable growth, albeit the threat of deflation exists. Polish economic growth is expected to accelerate this year, ...
Added: August 29, 2014
Avdeeva D., Akindinova N., Balashova E. et al., М. : Издательский дом НИУ ВШЭ, 2015
Мы попытались оценить возможные последствия кризиса для российской экономики в том случае, если надежды на возврат цен на нефть до 100 долл./барр. не оправдаются, а действие взаимных санкций между Россией и западными странами останется. При сохранении цен на нефть на уровне около 50 долл./барр. и тенденции к международной изоляции России объем ВВП в реальном выражении ...
Added: April 15, 2015
Smirnov S. V., Проблемы теории и практики управления 2016 № 6 С. 109-114
Methodological issues related to designing a system of indicators for tracing Russian business cycle are discussed. Several definitions of economic cycles in their application to the Russian economy are considered. Possible approaches to dating turning points, constructing composite cyclical indicators and their using for monitoring and forecasting cyclical trajectory are analyzed. ...
Added: June 29, 2016
Kitrar L. A., Lipkind T. M., Вопросы статистики 2021 Т. 28 № 2 С. 24-41
The article proposes a new set of composite indicators-predictors in business tendency surveys, which allow identifying early information signals of a cyclical nature in the economic behavior of business agents. The main criterion for the efficiency of such indicators is their sensitivity to a cyclical pattern and changes in the dynamics of statistical referents. Property ...
Added: May 11, 2021
Smirnov S. V., Avdeeva D., / Высшая школа экономики. Series EC "Economics". 2016. No. 135.
There is evidence in the economic literature that professional forecasters are unsuccessful in predicting recessions, but the reasons for these failures are still not clear. Meanwhile, this phenomenon has been little studied on the basis of quarterly estimates for various target horizons. We analysed quarterly consensus forecasts of real GDP growth rates and probabilities of ...
Added: May 19, 2016
Rasskazova A. N., Научный журнал НИУ ИТМО. Серия: Экономика и экологический менеджмент 2015 Т. 21 № 2 С. 77-84
This article discusses the range of issues concerning the laws governing the formation of growth factors in the value of the interaction of industrial firms with a bank in a recession. Purpose - to test the installation of the conceptual model of investment and lending activities of industrial companies for evaluation of management effectiveness. In ...
Added: April 17, 2015
Mamonov M. E., Pestova A., Pankova V. et al., Экономическая политика 2020 Т. 15 № 5 С. 130-159
This paper provides a joint analysis of business and credit cycles with a focus on unobservable factors affecting both cycles, at the cross-country level. Using quarterly data for 19 developed countries and Russia for the period from 1994 to 2018, we build a system of two dynamic probit models, which includes a cross-correlation between the ...
Added: July 9, 2021