Indicadores coincidentes de atividade econômica e uma cronologia de recessões para o Brasil

Abstract

This paper studies the statistical and macroeconomic properties of three different coincident indicators for the Brazilian economy and their respective dating for Brazilian recessions. All three incorporate almost one century of business-cycle research done in the U.S.—NBER and TCB’s framework, as well as recent econometric techniques. Some of the proposed indicators are based on heuristic methods others are based on sophisticated statistical and econometric techniques. As a result of the comparison of their properties, we were able to propose both a coincident indicator of economic activity and a recession chronology for Brazil. Our final choice of indicator uses the TCB’s method, where standardized coincident series are equally weighted in the coincident indicator. Our choice dates recessions closer to recession dates of Brazilian GDP.