Dating and Forecasting the Belgian Business Cycle

This paper investigates the Belgian business cycle. It establishes a chronology of cycles over the period 1980-2002 using real GDP, which it suggests can be regarded as a reference cycle. It then uses this chronology to evaluate the performance of alternative business cycle indicators in terms of their ability to predict business cycle turning points. We also investigate to what extent these indicators help improve forecasting the Belgian GDP growth.

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