In recent years, significant new developments have emerged in the field of business cycles and economic indicators. This volume contains twenty-two articles by international experts who are working with new and innovative approaches.

Preface; 1. Editors' introduction; Part I. New Concepts and Methods: 2. Toward a theory of leading indicators Frank de Leeuw; 3. A time-series framework for the study of leading indicators Salih N. Neftci; 4. A probability model of the coincident economic indicators James H. Stock and Mark W. Watson; 5. An international application of Neftci's probability approach for signalling growth recessions and recoveries using turning point indicators Michael P. Niemira; 6. On predicting the stage of the business cycle Roy H. Webb; 7. Bayesian methods for forecasting turning points in economic time series: sensitivity of forecasts to asymmetry of loss structures Arnold Zellner and Chansik Hong; 8. New developments in leading economic indicators Geoffrey H. Moore; Part II. Forecasting Records and Methods of Evaluation: 9. Forecasting cyclical turning points: the record in the past three recessions Stephen K. McNees; 10. Turning point predictions, errors, and forecasting procedures Hermon O. Stekler; 11. Forecasting peaks and troughs in the business cycle: on the choice and use of appropriate leading indicator series Stephen J. Silver; 12. Using a consensus of leading economic indicators to find right ball park for real GNP forecasts Edward F. Renshaw; 13. Some Australian experience with leading economic indicators Allan P. Layton; 14. Turning point prediction with the composite leading index: an exante analysis Francis X. Diebold and Glenn D. Rudebusch; 15. Forecasting recessions under the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law Victor Zarnowitz and Geoffrey H. Moore; 16. Leading indicators of inflation Howard L. Roth; Part III. New Economic Indicators: 17. Commodity prices as a leading indicator of inflation James M. Boughton and William H. Branson; 18. A leading indicator of inflation based on interest rates Susmita Dasgupta and Kajal Lahiri; 19. Using composite leading indicators of consumption to forecast sales and to signal turning points in stock market Michael P. Niemira; 20. Economic indicators for Australia's service sector Ernst A. Boehm; 21. Purchasing management survey data: their value as leading indicator Philip A. Klein and Geoffrey H. Moore; 22. An agenda for inventories input to leading composite index Feliks Tamm; Index.