The Hodrick-Prescott filter is the probably most popular tool for trend estimation in economics. Compared to other frequently used methods like the Baxter-King filter it allows to estimate the trend for the most recent periods of a time series. However, the Hodrick- Prescott filter suffers from...

Penalized splines are widespread tools for the estimation of trend and cycle, since they allow a data driven estimation of the penalization parameter by the incorporation into a linear mixed model. Based on the equivalence of penalized splines and the Hodrick-Prescott filter, this paper connects...

In this paper we use the Hodrick-Prescott filter for analyzing global temperature data. We are especially concerned with a reliable estimation of the trend component at the end of the data sample. To this end we employ time-varying values for the penalization parameter. The optimal values are...

We propose an estimation strategy that accounts for two major problems raised in the empirical literature testing for the prevalence of the inverted U-shaped relation between environmental degradation and economic activity, namely the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. First, we use...