Lagging indicators

Examples of Lagging indicators in the following topics:

• Economic Indicators

  • One application of economic indicators is the study of business cycles.
  • Statistics that report the status of the economy a few months in the past are called lagging economic indicators.
  • One such lagging indicator is the average length of unemployment.
  • It's often a good indicator of consumers' future buying intent.
  • Identify the major economic indicators and what economic factors they measure

• Defining Macroeconomics

  • Macroeconomists study aggregated indicators such as GDP, unemployment rates, and price indices to understand how the whole economy functions and develop models that explain the relationship between such factors as national income, output, consumption, unemployment, inflation, savings, investment, government spending, and international trade.
  • These variables taken as a whole comprise a grouping of variables that are referred to as economic indicators.
  • These indicators, which are classified as leading, lagging and coincident relative to their predictive capability, in combination with one another provide economists with a directional attribution for the economy.

• Disease Diagnosis

  • The initial task is to detect a medical indication indicating a diagnostic procedure.
  • The fact that a patient has sought a diagnosis can itself be an indication to perform a diagnostic procedure.
  • A failure to respond to treatments that would normally work may indicate a need for review of the diagnosis.
  • When making a medical diagnosis, a lag time is a delay in time until a step towards diagnosis of a disease or condition is made.
  • Types of lag times are mainly onset-to-medical encounter lag time or the time from onset of symptoms until visiting a health care provider and encounter-to-diagnosis lag time or the time from first medical encounter to diagnosis.

• Cultural Lag

  • Cultural lag can occur when technological innovation outpaces cultural adaptation.
  • The term cultural lag refers to the notion that culture takes time to catch up with technological innovations, and that social problems and conflicts are caused by this lag.
  • This delay is the cultural lag.
  • Cultural lag creates problems for a society in different ways.
  • As example of cultural lag is human embryonic stem cells.

• Enrichment and Isolation

  • Differential/indicator media distinguish one microorganism type from another growing on the same media.
  • This type of media uses the biochemical characteristics of a microorganism growing in the presence of specific nutrients or indicators (such as neutral red, phenol red, eosin y, or methylene blue) added to the medium to visibly indicate the defining characteristics of a microorganism.
  • During lag phase, bacteria adapt themselves to growth conditions.
  • During the lag phase of the bacterial growth cycle, synthesis of RNA, enzymes and other molecules occurs.
  • Bacterial growth in batch culture can be modeled with four different phases: lag phase (A), exponential or log phase (B), stationary phase (C), and death phase (D).

• Arguments For and Against Discretionary Monetary Policy

  • Policy is implemented based on indicator events in the economy and the policy is expected and carried out in a timely manner.
  • Further, as commented by Milton Friedman who argued in favor of a rules-based approach, the dynamics of discretionary policy present a lag between observation and implementation.

• Seasonal Affective Disorder and Jet Lag

  • Jet lag is a chronobiological-related problem, similar to issues often induced by shift work.
  • To the degree that the body cannot immediately realign these rhythms, it is jet lagged.
  • Crossing one or two time zones does not typically cause jet lag.
  • A five-hour flight from the east to the west coast of the United States may well result in jet lag.
  • Jet lag has been measured with simple analogue scales but a study has shown that these are relatively blunt for assessing all the problems associated with jet lag.

• A Random Walk

  • Line indicates the randomness of the exchange rate, but it is not completely random.
  • Moreover, statistical tests indicate the U.S. dollar-euro exchange rate is almost a random walk. ( The U.S. dollar-euro exchange rate has the structure, $s_t=p_1s_{t-1}+p_2s_{t-2}+e_t$, where $p_1$ is close to one while $p_2$ has a significant second lag.

• Time Lags and Targets

  • Unfortunately, three time lags hinder monetary policy.
  • It takes time when the Fed implements a policy until it shows up on the economy, the impact lag.
  • Time lags can amplify the business cycle.
  • If the administrative lag is one month while the impact lag equals six months, then the Fed's policy takes hold after one year and four months to influence the economy, or 9 + 1 +6.
  • Second, the Fed must have control over the intermediate target to overcome the impact lag.

• Balance and Determining Equilibrium

  • As the head rotates in a plane parallel to the semicircular canal, the fluid lags, deflecting the cupula in the direction opposite to the head movement.
  • The movement of two canals within a plane results in information about the direction in which the head is moving, and activation of all six canals can give a very precise indication of head movement in three dimensions.