IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Using the Purchasing Managers' Index to assess the economy's strength and the likely direction of monetary policy

Author Info

  • Evan F. Koenig

Abstract

When economists are concerned that the economy may be about to change direction, one of the indicators to which they give special scrutiny is the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), released monthly by the Institute for Supply Management. This article discusses the construction and interpretation of the PMI and presents evidence of its usefulness as an indicator of growth in the manufacturing sector and the economy as a whole, and as a predictor of changes in Federal Reserve policy. PMI values above 47 generally signal expansion in manufacturing, while the critical value for positive GDP growth is around 40. Over the past fifteen years, PMI values above 52.5 have tended to be associated with rising short-term interest rates.> When economists are concerned that the economy may be about to change direction, one of the indicators to which they give special scrutiny is the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), released monthly by the Institute for Supply Management. This article discusses the construction and interpretation of the PMI and presents evidence of its usefulness as an indicator of growth in the manufacturing sector and the economy as a whole, and as a predictor of changes in Federal Reserve policy. PMI values above 47 generally signal expansion in manufacturing, while the critical value for positive GDP growth is around 40. Over the past fifteen years, PMI values above 52.5 have tended to be associated with rising short-term interest rates.>

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/efpr/v01_n06_a01.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Article provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in its journal Economic and Financial Policy Review.

Volume (Year): (2002)
Issue (Month): ()
Pages:

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:fip:fedder:y:2002:n:v.1no.6
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.dallasfed.org/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Order Information: Email:


Keywords: Economic indicators ; Manufactures ; Interest rates;

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as in new window
  1. Balke, Nathan S. & Petersen, D'Ann M., 1998. "How well does the Beige Book reflect economic activity? Evaluating qualitative information quantitatively," Working Papers 9802, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
  2. Stephen K. McNees, 1986. "Modeling the Fed: a forward- looking monetary policy reaction function," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 3-8.
  3. Clarida, R. & Gali, J. & Gertler, M., 1998. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and some Theory," Working Papers 98-01, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  4. Evan F. Koenig & Sheila Dolmas & Jeremy Piger, 2003. "The Use and Abuse of Real-Time Data in Economic Forecasting," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(3), pages 618-628, August.
  5. Athanasios Orphanides, 1998. "Monetary policy rules based on real-time data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1998-03, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  6. R. Mark Rogers, 1992. "Forecasting industrial production: purchasing managers' versus production-worker hours data," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, issue Jan, pages 25-36.
  7. Ethan S. Harris, 1991. "Tracking the economy with the purchasing managers' index," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Aut, pages 61-69.
  8. Ethan S. Harris, 1991. "Tracking the economy with the purchasing managers' index," Research Paper 9124, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Gabe de Bondt, 2012. "Nowcasting: Trust the Purchasing Managers’ Index or wait for the flash GDP estimate?," EcoMod2012 3896, EcoMod.
  2. Sjoerd van den Hauwe & Dick van Dijk & Richard Paap, 2011. "Bayesian Forecasting of Federal Funds Target Rate Decisions," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-093/4, Tinbergen Institute.
  3. Valentina Aprigliano, 2011. "The relationship between the PMI and the Italian index of industrial production and the impact of the latest economic crisis," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 820, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  4. Li, Jiahan & Chen, Weiye, 2014. "Forecasting macroeconomic time series: LASSO-based approaches and their forecast combinations with dynamic factor models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 996-1015.
  5. Claudia Godbout & Marco J. Lombardi, 2012. "Short-Term Forecasting of the Japanese Economy Using Factor Models," Staff Working Papers 12-7, Bank of Canada.
  6. Daragh Clancy, 2013. "Output Gap Estimation Uncertainty: Extracting the TFP Cycle Using an Aggregated PMI Series," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 44(1), pages 1-18.
  7. Kajal Lahiri & George Monokroussos, 2011. "Nowcasting US GDP: The role of ISM Business Surveys," Discussion Papers 11-01, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
  8. Claudia Godbout & Jocelyn Jacob, 2010. "Le pouvoir de prévision des indices PMI," Discussion Papers 10-3, Bank of Canada.
  9. repec:ecb:ecbwps:20111428 is not listed on IDEAS
  10. D’Agostino, Antonello & Schnatz, Bernd, 2012. "Survey-based nowcasting of US growth: a real-time forecast comparison over more than 40 years," Working Paper Series 1455, European Central Bank.
  11. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2014. "Purchasing and supply managers provide early clues on the direction of the US economy: An application of a new market-timing test," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 599-618.
  12. Khundrakpam, Jeevan Kumar & George, Asish Thomas, 2012. "An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship between WPI and PMI-Manufacturing Price Indices in India," MPRA Paper 50929, University Library of Munich, Germany.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedder:y:2002:n:v.1no.6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Amy Chapman)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.