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Chapter 5 Transportation Indicators: Summary and Concluding Remarks

Transportation Indicators and Business Cycles

ISBN: 978-0-85724-147-4, eISBN: 978-0-85724-148-1

Publication date: 30 September 2010

Abstract

In this volume, we have studied the cyclical behavior of numerous business cycle indicators from the U.S. transportation sector and studied how they are related to those of the overall economy. Our study began with the conceptualization of what constitutes the transportation services sector, identifying relevant monthly indicators from the private sector and the government, and finally putting them together to construct a monthly measure of output of the transportation services sector. The challenge was to develop an indicator that will be available promptly soon after a month with other widely reported monthly indicators such as the index of industrial production, Institute for Supply Management (ISM) surveys, CPI, index of leading indicators, etc. and is not subject to much data revisions. Since monthly activity measures of major transportation services sectors such as trucking and railroads are produced by private membership organizations, use of these data in the production of official statistics in the public sector needed skillful persuasion of government officials. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) releases the preliminary number for the latest month and replaces the number for the oldest preliminary month with a revised number. All other revisions are held until an annual comprehensive revision of the transportation services output (TSI). It is gratifying to see that the arrangement of cooperation between the transportation department and these private service organizations are working out seamlessly, and TSI continues to get the media attention.

Citation

Lahiri, K. (2010), "Chapter 5 Transportation Indicators: Summary and Concluding Remarks", Lahiri, K. (Ed.) Transportation Indicators and Business Cycles (Contributions to Economic Analysis, Vol. 289), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 117-123. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0573-8555(2010)0000289007

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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