Transportation Indicators and Business Cycles

"Transportation Indicators and Business Cycles" recognises the important role the transportation sector plays in business cycle propagation and develops indicators for this sector to identify its current state, and predict its future. The reference cycle is defined, including business and growth cycles, for this sector over the period from 1979 using both the conventional National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) method and modern time series models. A one-to-one correspondence between cycles in the transportation sector and those in the aggregate economy is found. It also constructs an index of leading indicators for the transportation sector using rigorous statistical procedures, and performs well as a forecasting tool.