This Paper uses annual data spanning 1870 to 1930 on a set of variables correlated with business conditions to construct an index of real economic activity in Switzerland. We extract an estimate of the common component of the data series using principal components analysis and the unobservable...

This paper uses annual data spanning 1962 to 2003 to examine whether business and inflation cycles have become more similar across Chinese provinces as the economy has been liberalised and modernised. We find evidence of synchronisation, although business cycles in a group of mainly northwestern...

Monetary policy is typically formulated with a very short-term interest rate, while longer rates matter in the transmission mechanism. We show that financial market shocks impact less on the macroeconomy if policy is set with a longer rate.

Interest-rate smoothing is traditionally attributed to the gradual adjustment of monetary policy to shocks. Rudebusch (2002) argues that smoothing can also arise spuriously if an autocorrelated variable is incorrectly excluded from the estimated reaction function. This paper presents a model...