Enkätbaserade konjunkturindikatorer

Sammanfattning: This paper compares and evaluates two survey-based economic indicators’ ability to predict industrial production in Sweden. The economic indicators predictive ability is evaluated in a pre-crisis and crisis setting. Whereas “the crisis” is defined as the recession that took place in 2007-2009 often referred to as “the financial crisis”. More exactly, the total sample is divided into three subsamples: the period before the crisis (2003-2006), the downturn phase of the crisis (2007-2009) and the recovery phase of the crisis (2009-2010). The forecast horizons are 1, 4, 8 and 12 moths. The results indicate that both of the economic indicators have good forecasting properties in pre-crisis period as well as in the recovery phase of the crisis. In the downturn phase the economic indicators fail to improve forecast accuracy compared to “benchmark-forecasts” of industrial production. Furthermore, it is evident that only for long forecast horizons, eight and twelve months the pre-crisis setting significantly outperforms benchmark forecasts. Finally, the results prove that the forecasts in the downturn phase are generally optimistic. That is, the forecasts do not reflect the realized extent of the crisis. Interestingly, the opposite is true forecasts for the recovery phase. The forecasts in the recovery phase are generally pessimistic.