The Relationship between the PMI and the Italian Index of Industrial Production and the Impact of the Latest Economic Crisis

Survey data attract considerable interest as timely and reliable series for assessing the state of the economy. We investigate the relationship between the manufacturing PMI and the Index of Industrial Production (IPI) for Italy, with a special focus on the effects of the latest crisis. The manufacturing PMI tracks a medium-to-long run component of the IPI quarterly growth rate, which is estimated by a one-sided multivariate Wavelet filter. This filter provides more efficient estimates at the end of the sample than the Baxter and King method. Furthermore, the Wavelet basis allows us to take into account the time-varying oscillations of a series caused by the large negative shocks characterizing the latest global crisis, while the non-parametric framework does not force us to conclude definitely for the occurrence of structural breaks not yet testable rigorously.