Global Business Cycle Index

A supplement to the US BCI, reading the cycle across the world's largest economies. Each country is z-scored on its own confidence-survey history; the global composite is a GDP-weighted mean. Updated .

Country scorecard

Each country's z-score is computed on its own monthly confidence-survey history (min 24 obs). Phase classification uses level + 3-month momentum: EXPANSION (z > 0.1, Δ ≥ 0), LATE CYCLE (z > 0.1, Δ < 0), RECESSION (z < −0.1, Δ < 0), RECOVERY / EARLY CYCLE (z < −0.1, Δ ≥ 0). Sorted by GDP weight.

Global composite

Line = GDP-weighted mean of country z-scores (equal weight where GDP share unavailable). Shaded bands = NBER-dated US recessions, overlaid as a reference anchor even though the composite is global — the US cycle typically leads by 2–6 months, and deviations between the global composite and the US phase are often where the interesting allocation calls sit.

Methodology

The global composite is a cross-check on the US BCI, not a replacement. When the US BCI says expansion but the global composite is rolling over, the dispersion is itself the signal — the regime is decoupling, which changes the fair value of US equities vs. global and EM. When they roll together, conviction goes up.

Sources. Country-level business and consumer confidence surveys from FRED, sourced onward from OECD / EU / national statistical offices. Each series is resampled to month-end and z-scored against its own expanding monthly history (min 24 observations, no look-ahead).

Country weighting. GDP weights are fixed at approximate IMF WEO nominal shares — not re-estimated. The weighting is deliberately static; we want the composite's cadence to reflect survey movement, not reweighting drift.

What's not here. The Streamlit app's Global Cycle tab layers in USD-milkshake FX data, Eurodollar funding spreads, and de-dollarization indicators. Those overlap materially with the Dollar System pillar and live there instead. This page is strictly the global cycle — the dollar plumbing reads next door.

Cross-references

Multi-Polar World — cross-country reserves composition, BIS credit gaps across 44 countries, and the structural decoupling thesis. The country dispersion this page measures shows up as the cycle read; multi-polar shows up as the regime read.
US BCI — the headline cycle factor this page cross-checks against. When the two diverge, the dispersion is itself the signal.
US-side forward complements with published track records: Inflation Nowcast, Wage Growth Nowcast, Industrial Production Nowcast. All live-appending to the Calibration Ledger.

Canon

Stock & Watson (2012) — international business-cycle synchronization; Kose, Otrok & Prasad (2012, IER) — global, regional, and country factors in real activity; OECD (2014) — CLI methodology documentation (the leading-indicator parent of many of the surveys used).

Inputs: FRED (country BCI / CCI / CLI series, OECD-sourced). Nightly rebuild. See the methodology index for the full indicator manifest.