Construction of composite leading indicator for the Slovak economy

Cyclical performance of economies in a turbulent environment is forcing researchers to search for early signals of turning points between the phases of slowdowns and accelerations. The most appropriate tool to solve this problem is the composite leading indicator (CLI), which is an aggregate index of several individual indicators proved to be statistical relevant for analyzing and forecasting of significant macro-economic indicators (reference series). The leading indicator provides qualitative information of the most probable performance of a reference cycle (i.e. GDP, Industrial production) with a significant lead-time of several months. INFOSTAT (the research institution of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic) is about to create and use its own periodically published composite leading indicator (now the only CLI for Slovakia is published by OECD) as a source of new information about so far non-investigated economic relations with the aim to improve the quality of short-term forecasts.