New composite leading indicator of the Hungarian business cycle

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to create a composite leading indicator (CLI) for monitoring and predicting Hungarian business cycles. We compare the existing CLI applied by the OECD and Eurostat with our own CLI. According to our findings, our CLI forecasts the evolution of a referential series more precisely than the CLIs developed by the OECD and Eurostat. Nevertheless, from our point of view, the application of all existing CLIs at the same time can be appropriate. Consequently, the number of false signals should be reduced. The CLIs allow us to receive the first rough preliminary estimations of an economic cycle, in our case, the Hungarian one.