Ozyildirim Ataman - Business Cycles in BRICS

This book series presents scientific and scholarly studies focusing on societies and political orders in transition, for example in Central and Eastern Europe but also elsewhere in the world. By comparing established societies, characterized by well-established market economies and well-functioning democracies, with post-socialist societies, often characterized by emerging markets and fragile political systems, the series identifies and analyzes factors influencing change and continuity in societies and political orders. These factors include state capacity to establish formal and informal rules, democratic institutions, forms of social structuration, political regimes, levels of corruption, specificity of political cultures, as well as types and orientation of political and economic elites.

This series welcomes monographs and edited volumes from a variety of disciplines and approaches, such as political and social sciences and economics, which are accessible to both academics and interested general readers.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, democratization, regime change, changing social norms, migration, etc.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15626

International Advisory Board:

Bluhm, Katharina; Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany

Buckley, Cynthia; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sociological Research, USA

Cox, Terry; Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, UK

Fish, Steve; Berkeley University, USA

Ilyin, Michail; National Research Universiy Higher School of Economics, Russia

Melville, Andrei; National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia

Radaev, Vadim; National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

At the latest after the outbreak of the Great Financial Crisis, the benefits of having reliable but especially timely data to analyse the current stand of the economy have generally been recognized. How else can policymakers react adequately to shocks or cyclical movements if they cannot analyse their magnitude and impact in statistical data first? Many official time series, e.g. those that are published as part of the System of National Accounts, are however published with a delay often not allowing politicians to introduce countervailing measures timely enough. For that reason, more and more countries around the world are nowadays publishing so-called business tendency surveys, qualitative survey results on firms that are released shortly after collection and thereby do deliver timely information on the state of the respective economy.

This volume centres on such surveys conducted in the so-called BRICS countries, while also looking into the measurement and forecasting of cyclical development using composite indicators. Whereas particularly in Europe there has been a long tradition in this field, for these swiftly emerging BRICS that has not yet been the case. This volume takes stock of what has been achieved so far and stimulates further developments in this field. It thereby helps closing the gaps across countries, including but not only restricted to these BRICS economies. I am sure that also researchers in other parts of the world will greatly benefit from the knowledge brought together in this volume.

At CIRET (Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys), the only truly global network of researchers and institutions interested in and working on or with surveys related to economic tendencies, we are therefore thrilled to see this volume emerge out of the conferences, workshops and meetings that we have organized over the years. This is an excellent example of what we hope to achieve with our networking activities: create a platform on research related to economic tendencies that allows experiences to be exchanged by participants all around the world and that results in further improvements in the creation and use of economic tendency surveys.

Congratulations to the editors on creating this milestone.

This volume is a collaborative effort of authors affiliated with prominent think tanks, universities and statistical offices from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africaa group of countries with emerging economies collectively called BRICS. This group has recently attracted great attention because of their large and growing economic and political power both in their regions and globally. For now, BRICS is a new centre of gravity which aspires to compete with that of the post-WWII era composed of the group of large mature economies (the G-7).