Richard Etter

Coincident and leading indicators of manufacturing industry: sales, production, orders and inventories in switzerland

The Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research regularly conducts business tendency surveys (BTS) amongst manufacturing firms. The information thus generated is available with a publication lead to the official Swiss sales, production, order and inventory statistics. It is shown that the survey data can be used to generate reasonably precise estimates of the reference series with leads of at least one quarter. Specifically, cross-correlations of quarterly series are computed to screen the data for pairs of highly correlated business tendency survey series and corresponding official statistics.

Estimating and forecasting production and orders in manufacturing industry from business survey data

Since general economic activity is highly sensitive to developments in the manufacturing industry, data on industrial production, sales, and orders provide key inputs for analyses of business cycles. However, a major drawback is the considerable compilation and publication lag regarding official data. Moreover, to keep these lags as short as possible, the latest published data are usually provisional and subject to substantial revisions. Therefore, a fundamental issue for policy-oriented business cycle research is access to leading or at least coincident and reliable indicators of economic activity in manufacturing industry. To this end, the Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research (KOF) regularly conducts detailed monthly and quarterly business tendency surveys (BTS) amongst Swiss manufacturing firms. This paper analyses, how the information from the KOF surveys is related to the official production, sales and order statistics generated independently and published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (Bundesamt für Statistik, henceforth: SFSO). While both data bases refer to the same industrial activity and the same classification of industrial activities, they are conceptually quite different: KOF survey data are mostly qualitative (perceived improvement, deterioration, or no change with respect to a given topic or

Estimating and Forecasting Production and Orders in Manufacturing Industry from Business Survey Data. Evidence from Switzerland Based on Structural Patterns from 1990-2000: evidence from Switzerland based on structural patterns from 1990-2000

Since general economic activity is highly sensitive to developments in the manufacturing industry, data on industrial production, sales, and orders provide key inputs for analyses of business cycles. However, a major drawback is the considerable compilation and publication lag regarding official data. Moreover, to keep these lags as short as possible, the latest published data are usually provisional and subject to substantial revisions. Therefore, a fundamental issue for policy-oriented business cycle research is access to leading or at least coincident and reliable indicators of economic activity in manufacturing industry. To this end, the Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research (KOF) regularly conducts detailed monthly and quarterly business tendency surveys (BTS) amongst Swiss manufacturing firms. This paper analyses, how the information from the KOF surveys is related to the official production, sales and order statistics generated independently and published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (Bundesamt für Statistik, henceforth: SFSO). While both data bases refer to the same industrial activity and the same classification of industrial activities, they are conceptually quite different: KOF survey data are mostly qualitative (perceived improvement, deterioration, or no change with respect to a given topic or