摘要：This paper has three main contributions. The first is to propose an individual coincident indicator for the following Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. In order to obtain similar series to those traditionally used in business-cycle research in constructing coincident indices (output, sales, income and employment) we were forced to back-cast several individual country series which were not available in a long time-series span. Our second contribution is to establish a chronology of recessions for these countries, covering the period from 1980 to 2010 on a monthly basis. Based on this chronology, we compare countries in several respects. Our final contribution is to propose an aggregate coincident indicator for the Latin American economy, which weights individual-country composite indices. Its behavior is then compared with the coincident indicator (The Conference Board – TCB) of the U.S. economy. We find that the U.S. indicator Granger-causes the Latin American indicator.
其他摘要：This paper has three main contributions. The first is to propose an individual coincident indicator for the following Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. In order to obtain similar series to those traditionally used in business-cycle research in constructing coincident indices (output, sales, income and employment) we were forced to back-cast several individual country series which were not available in a long time-series span. Our second contribution is to establish a chronology of recessions for these countries, covering the period from 1980 to 2010 on a monthly basis. Based on this chronology, we compare countries in several respects. Our final contribution is to propose an aggregate coincident indicator for the Latin American economy, which weights individual-country composite indices. Its behavior is then compared with the coincident indicator (The Conference Board – TCB) of the U.S. economy. We find that the U.S. indicator Granger-causes the Latin American indicator.
关键词：Latin America; Coincident Indicators; Business Cycles; Kalman Filter; State Space Models.
