Getting the ROC into Sync

Abstract

Judging the conformity of binary events in macroeconomics and finance has often been done with indices that measure synchronization. In recent years, the use of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve has become popular for this task. This article shows that the ROC and synchronization approaches are closely related, and each can be derived from a decision-making framework. Furthermore, the resulting global measures of the degree of conformity can be identified and estimated using the standard method of moments estimators. The impact of serial dependence in the underlying series upon inferences can therefore be allowed for. Such serial correlation is common in macroeconomic and financial data.