1 / 15

Bureau of Transportation Statistics

Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The Transportation Services Index: Its Methodology and Relationship to the Recent Recession. Ken Notis and Peg Young. Introduction. What is the Transportation Services Index (TSI)?

jamal-hines
Download Presentation

Bureau of Transportation Statistics

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Bureau of Transportation Statistics The Transportation Services Index: Its Methodology and Relationship to the Recent Recession Ken Notis and Peg Young

  2. Introduction • What is the Transportation Services Index (TSI)? • A monthly measure of the volume of services performed by the ‘for-hire’ transportation sector • Covers the activities of for-hire freight carriers, for-hire passenger carriers, and both types of carriers combined

  3. Transportation Services Index, Jan-90 to Jul-10 • TSI data and methodology are available for download at www.bts.gov.

  4. Transportation Services Output Index (TSOI) • TSI Predecessor • Research by Lahiri, Stekler and Yao • TSOI covered the span of 1979 to 2002 • Turning point analysis suggested the freight component of the TSOI leads the economy

  5. Historical TSI • BTS modifications to the TSOI • some different data sources • methods of weighting • estimating recent values • Published TSI spans from 1990 to the present • Presently provided on the BTS website • Historical TSI spans from 1979 to the present • Preliminary results shown in this presentation

  6. TSI Production Process Data Collection Index 2000 Weight & Combine Weight & Combine Seasonal Adjustment Chain Air RPM Passenger TSI Chained Passenger TSI Transit Ridership Rail RPM TSI Truck Tonnage Chained TSI Freight TSI Rail Carloads & Intermodals Waterborne Commerce Chained Freight TSI Air Ton-Miles Movement of Gas & Petroleum

  7. TSI-Total, Freight, and Passenger

  8. Measurement of Turning Points • Recessions • Use National Bureau of Economic Research approach (Bry and Boshan, 1971) • Moving averages • Spencer curves • Growth cycles • Detrend the data • Zarnowitz and Ozyildirim (2001)

  9. Freight TSI Smoothed

  10. TSI Compared to Recessions

  11. TSI Compared to Economic Growth Cycles

  12. Initial Conclusions • TSI freight leads the business cycle/growth cycle at peak turning points, is coincident at troughs • The extent of that lead varies considerably • The use of various standard time series techniques, such as deseasonalizing and smoothing, helps to clarify this relationship

  13. Freight TSI Actual and Smooth Jan-00 to Jul-10

  14. TSI and the Recession • TSI freight’s peak was in May 2006, 19 months before the recession began • TSI freight’s trough coincided with the end of the recession • TSI freight does not currently indicate a double dip • Why did TSI lead the recent recession by so much more than it had earlier recessions and slowdowns? • A different kind of recession? • Energy cost issues?

  15. Freight TSI and Gasoline, July-79 to July-10

More Related