IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedder/y2002nv.1no.6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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.>

Suggested Citation

  • Evan F. Koenig, 2002. "Using the Purchasing Managers' Index to assess the economy's strength and the likely direction of monetary policy," Economic and Financial Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedder:y:2002:n:v.1no.6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Balke, Nathan S & Petersen, D'Ann, 2002. "How Well Does the Beige Book Reflect Economic Activity? Evaluating Qualitative Information Quantitatively," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(1), pages 114-136, February.
    3. Richard Clarida & Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 115(1), pages 147-180.
    4. Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 964-985, September.
    5. 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.
    6. Ethan S. Harris, 1991. "Tracking the economy with the purchasing managers' index," Research Paper 9124, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    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. 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.
    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. Lahiri, Kajal & Monokroussos, George, 2013. "Nowcasting US GDP: The role of ISM business surveys," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 644-658.
    2. Lombardi, Marco J. & Godbout, Claudia, 2012. "Short-term forecasting of the Japanese economy using factor models," Working Paper Series 1428, European Central Bank.
    3. Gabe de Bondt, 2012. "Nowcasting: Trust the Purchasing Managers’ Index or wait for the flash GDP estimate?," EcoMod2012 3896, EcoMod.
    4. van den Hauwe, Sjoerd & Paap, Richard & van Dijk, Dick, 2013. "Bayesian forecasting of federal funds target rate decisions," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 19-40.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Christiansen, Charlotte & Eriksen, Jonas Nygaard & Møller, Stig Vinther, 2014. "Forecasting US recessions: The role of sentiment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 459-468.
    8. Schnatz, Bernd & D'Agostino, Antonello, 2012. "Survey-based nowcasting of US growth: a real-time forecast comparison over more than 40 years," Working Paper Series 1455, European Central Bank.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. Claudia Godbout & Jocelyn Jacob, 2010. "Le pouvoir de prévision des indices PMI," Discussion Papers 10-3, Bank of Canada.
    12. 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.
    13. repec:ecb:ecbwps:20111428 is not listed on IDEAS

    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: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). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/frbdaus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.