Leading and Lagging Indicators

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Explain what leading and lagging indicators are and how companies can use them to make economic forecasts (and why firms must rely on them to formulate economic forecasts). An economic indicator is an economic statistic, which indicates how well the economy is doing and how well the economy is going to do in the future. Economic Indicators can be leading or lagging depending on the timing of the variable’s turning points (peaks and troughs) relative to the turning points of the business cycle. An economic variable is a leading variable if it tends to move in advance of aggregate economic activity. In other words, the peaks and troughs in a leading variable occur before the corresponding peaks and troughs in the business cycle. A lagging variable is one whose peaks are troughs tend to occur later than the corresponding peaks and troughs in the business cycle. Unemployment is a key-lagging variable, as the economy is doing badly or companies are expecting a downturn in the economy, the unemployment rate increases accordingly. Firm tend not to hire workers until they know that the economy has picked up and that this recovery is stable and that they are fairly sure that it will be an ongoing thing. So if the economy picks up firms will tend to lag a little bit in hiring workers at least permanent workers. Firms can use the information from leading and lagging indicators to make decisions. If a set of economic indicators suggest that the economy is going to do better or worse in the future than they had previously expected, they may decide to change their investing strategy. A lagging indicator is immensely significant because of its ability to confirm that a pattern is happening or about to occur. Firms need to look out for economic indicators. Economic indicator are things that tend to occur either in advance of or
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