Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/105962
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
IMK Working Paper No. 98
Publisher: 
Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Institut für Makroökonomie und Konjunkturforschung (IMK), Düsseldorf
Abstract: 
This paper uses several macroeconomic and financial indicators within a Markov Switching (MS) framework to predict the turning points of the business cycle. The presented model is applied to monthly German real-time data covering the recession and the recovery after the financial crisis. We show how to take advantage of combining single MS forecasts and of changing the number of regimes on the real-time path, where both leads to a higher forecast accuracy. Changing the number of regimes implies a distinction for recessions representing either a normal or an extraordinary one, which particularly means to determine as early as possible the point in time, from which the last recession structurally exceeded the previous ones. In fact it turns out that the Markov Switching model can signal quite early whether a conventional recession happens or whether an economic downturn will be more substantial.
Subjects: 
Business Cycle
Leading Indicators
Macroeconomic Forecasting
Markov Switching
JEL: 
C24
C53
E37
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.