The HSE ESI and the business cycle in the Russian economy

As the Russian economy is presently characterized by high uncertainty of doing business and a growing gap between opinions and actions of firms and decision makers, the importance of qualitative business surveys as a source of information is significantly rising. The paper investigates the ability of Russian business tendency surveys to identify business cycle turning points. For this purpose we have constructed an algorithm to build economic indicators which cover all information contained in the sectoral business surveys data. Identification of the turning points of these indicators allows us to track the stylized ‘averaged’ chronology of the business cycle. In addition, we have evaluated ex post the turning points in the GDP growth on the basis of the extracted cyclical component of the composite Economic Sentiment Indicator.