Constructing Coincident and Leading Indices of Economic Activity for the Brazilian Economy

Abstract

This paper has three original contributions. The first is the reconstructioneffort of the series of employment and income to allow the creation of a newcoincident index for the Brazilian economic activity. The second is the con-struction of a coincident index of the economic activity for Brazil, and fromit, (re) establish a chronology of recessions in the recent past of the Brazilianeconomy. The coincident index follows the methodology proposed by TCBand it covers the period 1980:1 to 2007:11. The third is the construction andevaluation of many leading indicators of economic activity for Brazil which fillsan important gap in the Brazilian Business Cycles literature.