This paper uses the open economy structural VAR model developed in Buckle, Kim, Kirkham, McLellan and Sharma (2002) to evaluate the impact of monetary policy on New Zealand business cycles and inflation variability and the output/inflation variability trade-off. The model includes a...

In recent years, there has been much debate on whether or not countries in a region should adopt a common currency. One of the criteria for assessing the suitability of forming a currency union is whether there is a sufficient risk-sharing mechanism in operation. Although adopting a common...

The paper refers to capacity utilisation, applying a short-cut that is sometimes used in business cycle research to yearly GDP and investment data from 1960 to the present for 22 countries. The basic idea is that the empirical short-run fluctuations of the capital output ratio v are mainly due...

The use of the Beveridge Nelson decomposition in macroeconomic analysis involves the truncation and estimation of infinite weighted sums of random variables, whereas the single source of error (SSE) state space approach provides a simple and effective framework that leads to exactly the same...

Empirical evidence documents a discernible negative relationship between government size, as measured by income tax rates and the output share of government purchases, and the magnitude of macroeconomic fluctuations in OECD countries since 1960. This implies that both taxes and public spending...

To analyze whether oil price can account for the business cycle asymmetries in the G7, this paper adopts the Friedman’s Plucking Markov Switching Model to decompose G7 real GDPs into common permanent components, common transitory components, infrequent Markov Switching negative shock and...

This paper presents an empirical characterization of Uruguayan’s Business Cycle applying the Switching Regime methodology; three scenarios were considered: recession, moderate growth and boom. The relation between regional and Uruguayan’s business cycle is analyzed through the same...

There is a long tradition in business cycle analysis of arguing that non-linear models are needed to explain the business cycle. In recent years many non-linear models have been fitted to data on GDP for many countries, but particularly for the U.S. In this paper we set our criteria to evaluate...