Secular Volatility Decline of the U.S. Composite Economic Indicator

The paper treats the issue of decreasing volatility of the U.S. economy observed since the mid-1980s. As a measure of volatility the residual variance of a composite economic indicator with Markov switching is used which. Two additional regimes are included capturing the secular shift in volatility. The mixed frequency is allowed for permitting the use of both monthly and quarterly component series. The low-intercept regime probabilities comply to the NBER business cycle dating, while the low-variance regime probabilities indicate the beginning of 1984 as a possible date of the structural break in volatility