We study the relation between inflation and real activity over the business cycle. We employ a Trend-Cycle VAR model to control for low-frequency movements in inflation, unemployment, and growth that are pervasive in the post-WWII period. We show that cyclical fluctuations of inflation are...

Over the postwar, the U.S., Europe and Japan have experienced what may be thought of as medium frequency oscillations between persistent periods of robust growth and persistent periods of relative stagnation. These medium frequency movements, further, appear to bear some relation to the high...

We establish that the recursive, state-space methods of Kalman filtering and smoothing can be used to implement the Doan, Litterman, and Sims (1983) approach to econometric forecast and policy evaluation. Compared with the methods outlined in Doan, Litterman, and Sims, the Kalman algorithms are...

Recent research has proposed the state space (88) framework for decomposition of GNP and other economic time series into trend and cycle components, using the Kalman filter. This paper reviews the empirical evidence and suggests that the resulting decomposition may be spurious, just as...

This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries' business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant...

The accuracy of particle filters for nonlinear state-space models crucially depends on the proposal distribution that mutates time t-1 particle values into time t values. In the widely-used bootstrap particle filter, this distribution is generated by the state-transition equation. While...

This paper offers a new approach to measuring the size of the informal economy based on VAT data for the European Union. Although data intensive, our EVADE measure is simpler and more transparent than existing measures. EVADE also shows more variation across countries of Europe than earlier...

This paper presents a very simple model of the effects of flexible exchange rates in the transmission of business cycles. The starting point is the traditional "locomotive" effect, through exports and imports. Aside from this horizontal transmission, the intertemporal exchange rate model...

We find a strong link between currency excess returns and the relative strength of the business cycle. Buying currencies of strong economies and selling currencies of weak economies generates high returns both in the cross section and time series of countries. These returns stem primarily from...