IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v40y2006i10p872-887.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic indicators for the US transportation sector

Author

Listed:
  • Lahiri, Kajal
  • Yao, Vincent Wenxiong

Abstract

Since the transportation sector plays an important role in business cycle propagation, we develop indicators for this sector to identify its current state, and predict its future. We define the reference cycle, including both business and growth cycles, for this sector over the period from 1979 using both the conventional National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) method and modern time series models. A one-to-one correspondence between cycles in the transportation sector and those in the aggregate economy is found; however, both business and growth cycles of transportation often start earlier and end later than those of the overall economy. We also construct an index of leading indicators for the transportation sector using rigorous statistical procedures, and is found to perform well as a forecasting tool.

Suggested Citation

  • Lahiri, Kajal & Yao, Vincent Wenxiong, 2006. "Economic indicators for the US transportation sector," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 872-887, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:40:y:2006:i:10:p:872-887
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965-8564(06)00023-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    2. Alan S. Blinder & Louis J. Maccini, 1991. "Taking Stock: A Critical Assessment of Recent Research on Inventories," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 73-96, Winter.
    3. Humphreys, Brad R. & Maccini, Louis J. & Schuh, Scott, 2001. "Input and output inventories," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 347-375, April.
    4. Victor Zarnowitz, 1992. "Business Cycles: Theory, History, Indicators, and Forecasting," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number zarn92-1.
    5. Layton, Allan P & Moore, Geoffrey H, 1989. "Leading Indicators for the Service Sector," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 7(3), pages 379-386, July.
    6. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 2004. "How costly is it to ignore breaks when forecasting the direction of a time series?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 411-425.
    7. Roy Batchelor, 2001. "Confidence indexes and the probability of recession: a Markov switching model," Indian Economic Review, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, vol. 36(1), pages 107-124, January.
    8. Harding, Don & Pagan, Adrian, 2002. "Dissecting the cycle: a methodological investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 365-381, March.
    9. Kajal Lahiri & Wenxiong Yao, 2004. "The predictive power of an experimental transportation output index," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 149-152.
    10. Chang-Jin Kim & Charles R. Nelson, 1998. "Business Cycle Turning Points, A New Coincident Index, And Tests Of Duration Dependence Based On A Dynamic Factor Model With Regime Switching," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 188-201, May.
    11. Granger, C W J, 1969. "Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 424-438, July.
    12. Peter Temin, 1998. "Causes of American business cycles: an essay in economic historiography," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 42(Jun), pages 37-64.
    13. Thor Hultgren, 1948. "American Transportation in Prosperity and Depression," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number hult48-1.
    14. Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell, 1946. "Measuring Business Cycles," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number burn46-1.
    15. Gerhard Bry & Charlotte Boschan, 1971. "Foreword to "Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs"," NBER Chapters, in: Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs, pages -1, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Moses Abramovitz, 1950. "Inventories and Business Cycles, with Special Reference to Manufacturers' Inventories," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number abra50-1.
    17. Kajal Lahiri & Herman O. Stekler & Wenxiong Yao & Peg Young, 2003. "Monthly Output Index for the U.S. Transportation Sector," Discussion Papers 03-12, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    18. Gerhard Bry & Charlotte Boschan, 1971. "Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bry_71-1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hultkrantz, Lars & A. Krüger, Niclas & Mantalos, Panagiotis, 2014. "Risk-adjusted long-term social rates of discount for transportation infrastructure investment," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 70-81.
    2. Krüger, Niclas A., 2012. "Estimating traffic demand risk – A multiscale analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1741-1751.
    3. Christian Balcells, 2022. "Determinants of firm boundaries and organizational performance: an empirical investigation of the Chilean truck market," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 423-461, April.
    4. Anirban Sanyal & Abhiman Das, 2018. "Nowcasting sales growth of manufacturing companies in India," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(5), pages 510-526, January.
    5. Andersson, Fredrik N G & Elger, Thomas, 2007. "Freight Transportation Activity, Business Cycles and Trend Growth," Working Papers 2007:15, Lund University, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kajal Lahiri, Wenxiong Yao, and Peg Young, 2003. "Cycles in the Transportation Sector and the Aggregate Economy," Discussion Papers 03-14, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    2. Yao, Vincent W. & Sloboda, Brian W., 2005. "Forecasting Cycles in the Transportation Sector," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 44(2).
    3. Kajal Lahiri & Wenxiong Yao, 2004. "A dynamic factor model of the coincident indicators for the US transportation sector," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(10), pages 595-600.
    4. Yao, Vincent W. & Solboda, Brian, 2005. "Forecasting Cycles in the Transportation Sector," 46th Annual Transportation Research Forum, Washington, D.C., March 6-8, 2005 208159, Transportation Research Forum.
    5. Hall, Viv B & Thomson, Peter, 2022. "A boosted HP filter for business cycle analysis: evidence from New Zealand’s small open economy," Working Paper Series 9473, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    6. Ritabrata Bose & Ashima Goyal, 2020. "Disaggregated Indian industrial cycles: A Spectral analysis," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2020-033, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    7. Zarnowitz, Victor & Ozyildirim, Ataman, 2006. "Time series decomposition and measurement of business cycles, trends and growth cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1717-1739, October.
    8. Dutra, Tiago Mota & Dias, José Carlos & Teixeira, João C.A., 2022. "Measuring financial cycles: Empirical evidence for Germany, United Kingdom and United States of America," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 599-630.
    9. Sonia de Lucas Santos & M. Jesús Delgado Rodríguez & Inmaculada Álvarez Ayuso & José Luis Cendejas Bueno, 2011. "Los ciclos económicos internacionales: antecedentes y revisión de la literatura," Cuadernos de Economía - Spanish Journal of Economics and Finance, Asociación Cuadernos de Economía, vol. 34(95), pages 73-84, Agosto.
    10. Sergey V. Smirnov & Nikolay V. Kondrashov & Anna V. Petronevich, 2017. "Dating Cyclical Turning Points for Russia: Formal Methods and Informal Choices," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 13(1), pages 53-73, May.
    11. Vitor Castro, 2015. "The Portuguese business cycle: chronology and duration dependence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 325-342, August.
    12. Selim Elekdag & Yiqun Wu, 2013. "Rapid Credit Growth in Emerging Markets: Boon or Boom-Bust?," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(5), pages 45-62, September.
    13. Dagum, Estela Bee, 2010. "Business Cycles and Current Economic Analysis/Los ciclos económicos y el análisis económico actual," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 28, pages 577-594, Diciembre.
    14. Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2011. "Identification of Slowdowns and Accelerations for the Euro Area Economy," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 73(3), pages 335-364, June.
    15. Kose, M. Ayhan & Sugawara, Naotaka & Terrones, Marco E., 2020. "Global Recessions," MPRA Paper 98608, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. L.A. Gil-Alana, 2005. "Fractional Cyclical Structures & Business Cycles in the Specification of the US Real Output," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(1-2), pages 99-126.
    17. Viv B. Hall & Peter Thomson, 2021. "Does Hamilton’s OLS Regression Provide a “better alternative” to the Hodrick-Prescott Filter? A New Zealand Business Cycle Perspective," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 17(2), pages 151-183, November.
    18. Igan, Deniz & Kabundi, Alain & Nadal De Simone, Francisco & Pinheiro, Marcelo & Tamirisa, Natalia, 2011. "Housing, credit, and real activity cycles: Characteristics and comovement," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 210-231, September.
    19. Wolfgang Nierhaus & Timo Wollmershäuser, 2016. "ifo Konjunkturumfragen und Konjunkturanalyse: Band II," ifo Forschungsberichte, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 72, September.
    20. Louise Holm, 2016. "The Swedish business cycle, 1969-2013," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2015(2), pages 1-22.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:40:y:2006:i:10:p:872-887. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.