Long abstract

About Statistics Publications & Documents Information by Country

The OECD has compiled Composite Leading Indicators (CLIs) since the beginning of the 1980s for 22 Member countries. OECD CLIs are now well disseminated and the Organisation has undertaken updating work to ensure that they continue to provide reliable signals for future turning points. To achieve this objective, it was decided to improve the estimation of the trend of the series used in the compilation of CLIs, by updating the lists of dates for peaks and troughs observed in the past cycles of these series, i.e. the chronologies of turning points. It was also decided to review the composition of the CLIs, in particular, to improve their overall timeliness. This document provides an outline of this updating work.

The previous update of the turning points and revision of component series was performed in 1996-1997 for the major seven countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States) as well as for Norway and Belgium. At the same time, a CLI was created for Mexico. The latest revision for the remaining countries (Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland) took place during the late 1980s, at least for the updating of the turning points.

The update outlined in this document ensures that the CLI calculation is based on more up-to- date chronologies of turning points. As a result, the trend estimation, which is a crucial element of the OECD methodology, will be strongly improved.