Application of Leading Indicators with Regard to Industrial Planning

Abstract

An essay recently published by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research on the subject of “Branch indicators for the future demand of firms”¹⁾ shows by way of several examples how demand indicators specific to a company can be developed from the results of economic tendency survey. These demand indicators are of the nature of projections, since they more or less forecast the sales trends as measured from the amount of incoming orders. The extent to which this forecasting method is used by industry is not generally known²⁾. Nevertheless it is reasonable to suspect that in recent years more and more companies have turned to the use of leading indicators as an instrument of sales planning.