Using a number of alternative approaches, Sichel (1994) demonstrated evidence supporting the notion that the US business cycle is best characterized as having three distinct phases, viz. contraction, followed by rapid expansion during the early stages of the recovery phase, followed by a period...

Due to well-known lags, counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies often exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, business cycles. Early recognition of upcoming phase shifts, particularly contractions, may assist in fine-tuning such policies. This objective is pursued in the paper by applying Hamilton's...

This paper draws its title from a paper written over 35 years ago by Geoffrey H. Moore (1967). Why the need for a reprise? First, there would appear currently to be somewhat diverging views as to what properly constitutes a recession. Second, largely as a result of this, in many countries other...

A new business cycle turning point signalling system is proposed and examined by using Japanese, US and Australian composite indexes of economic activity. Time varying transition probabilities in a Markov regime-switching model are used as the basis of the signalling system. The performance of...

By mid-2008 the world was witnessing the unfolding of a relatively rare macroeconomic phenomenon, namely, the onset of what one might call a synchronized international -- or ‘world’ -- recession. But what exactly is a ‘synchronized world recession’? This article proposes a practical...