Usefulness of US Transportation Service Index for New York State/Metro Area

摘要

Business indices play a critical role in summarizing the business conditions of the economy and indicating the forthcoming of phase changes in business cycle. The useful indices should accurately reflect the business reality and dynamic changes of the economy. In the past decades, significant industry transformation from manufacturing to services has been observed in both New York State/Metro area and the entire nation. The share of goods in US GDP has declined from 54% to 35% and the share of services has increased from 34% to 56% from Q1 1953 to Q2 2003. In New York, the dominance of sugar refining, garment manufacturing, and publishing in early years have also been replaced by growing industries of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector. However, before the US Transportation Service Index being developed in 2003, information from services sectors is significantly underrepresented. Among the current four coincident and ten leading indicators of NBER, there is no single index specifically measuring services sectors. In New York, there is no single service index in place to help government agencies and private sectors monitor the dynamics of the business cycle and issue early warning signals. For filling the gap in New York, we propose this study to assess the usefulness of the US Transportation Service Index for New York State/Metro Area and explore the possibility of developing a New York State/Metro Transportation Service Index.