Financial cycles can be important drivers of real activity, but there is scant evidence about how well they signal recession risks. We address this question, using a range of financial cycle measures. Unlike most papers, ours assesses forecasting performance not just for the United States but also for a panel of advanced and emerging market economies. We find that financial cycle measures have significant forecasting power both in and out of sample, even for a three-year horizon. Moreover, they outperform the term spread - the most widely used indicator in the literature - in nearly all specifications. These results are robust to different recession specifications.

金融周期可能是实际活动的重要驱动力，但是很少有证据表明金融周期能很好地预示衰退风险。我们使用一系列财务周期指标来解决这个问题。与大多数论文不同，我们的论文不仅评估了美国的预测绩效，还评估了一组先进和新兴市场经济体的预测绩效。我们发现，即使对于三年期，财务周期指标在样本内和样本外都具有重要的预测能力。此外，在几乎所有规格中，它们的表现都优于价差一词（即文献中使用最广泛的指标）。这些结果对于不同的经济衰退指标是可靠的。