Submitted by Claudia Rodrigues (claudia.rodrigues@fgv.br) on 2010-10-29T19:46:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese.pdf: 714467 bytes, checksum: 12e873d7f9f355f88053300412de6eda (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Andrea Virginio Machado(andrea.machado@fgv.br) on 2010-11-04T12:06:13Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese.pdf: 714467 bytes, checksum: 12e873d7f9f355f88053300412de6eda (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2010-11-09T10:58:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese.pdf: 714467 bytes, checksum: 12e873d7f9f355f88053300412de6eda (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-12-14 / This paper has three original contributions. The first is the reconstruction of employment and income series to allow the creation of a new coincident index for the Brazilian economic activity. The second is the construction of a coincident index of the economic activity for Brazil, and from it, (re) establish a chronology of recessions in the recent past of the Brazilian economy. The coincident index follows the methodology proposed by The Conference Board and it covers the period 1980:1 to 2007:11. The third is the construction and evaluation of many leading indicators of economic activity for Brazil which fills an important gap in the Brazilian Business Cycles literature.