MULTIVARIABLE BUSINESS CYCLE ANALYSIS WITH SELF-ORGANIZING MAPS - ARE THE CYCLES' SIMILAR?

Companies are operating more and more on the global markets and their performance differs from country to country. Therefore, it is important to analyze to what extent the economic trends of countries differ from each other. This knowledge is of utmost importance for stakeholders because changes in economic trends affect the success of companies’ investments and operations and subsequently the trends influence the financial performance of companies (i.e. profitability, solvency and liquidity). This study compares financial trends in nine countries with nine economic indicators. The research period encompasses the years 1993-2000. The analyses have been made with the technique of Self-Organizing Maps (SOM), which enables simultaneous analysis of several variables. The results indicate that financial fluctuations have at least slight international origin i.e. similar fluctuations have occurred at almost the same time – although the severity varies - in different countries on each continent. The research also reveals that inside European countries financial trends have been close to each other, excluding Great Britain. The most constant economic development has been in North America. The method used also showed clearly the Asian financial crisis.

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