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Working Paper
Monitoring the world business cycle
We propose a Markov-switching dynamic factor model to construct an index of global business cycle conditions, to perform short-term forecasts of world GDP quarterly growth in real time and to compute real-time business cycle probabilities. To overcome the real-time forecasting challenges, the model accounts for mixed frequencies, for asynchronous data publication and for leading indicators. Our pseudo real-time results show that this approach provides reliable and timely inferences of the world quarterly growth and of the world state of the business cycle on a monthly basis.
Discussion Paper
Is Chinese Growth Overstated?
For analysts of the Chinese economy, questions about the accuracy of the country’s official GDP data are a frequent source of angst, leading many to seek guidance from alternative indicators. These nonofficial gauges often suggest Beijing’s growth figures are exaggerated, but that conclusion is not supported by our analysis, which draws upon satellite measurements of the intensity of China’s nighttime light emissions—a good proxy for GDP growth that is presumably not subject to whatever measurement errors may affect the country’s official economic statistics.