This paper is concerned with the apparent change in the U.S. oil price-macroeconomy relationship. It is investigated to what extent this change can be accounted for by the large oil price surges witnessed in the 1970s. The innovative approach of rolling impulse responses is applied and both the...

Although oil price shocks have long been viewed as one of the leading candidates for explaining U.S. recessions, surprisingly little is known about the extent to which oil price shocks explain recessions. We provide a formal analysis of this question with special attention to the possible role...

Uncertainty about the future course of the economy is a possible driver of aggregate fluctuations. To identify the different dimensions of uncertainty in the macroeconomy we construct a large dataset covering all types of economic uncertainty. We then identify two fundamental factors which...

In this paper an Unobserved Components Model is employed to decompose U.S. real GDP into trend and cycle components. The main findings are that there exist three cycles with a period of about two, five and 13 years, respectively, and that the long-run development during the last 50 years can be...

Revealing the precise thresholds at which fluctuations in oil prices start to affect gross domestic product and its various components (consumption, investment, expenditure and exports) holds significant implications for policymakers in both oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. Existing...

Development projects in the oil industry often have cost overruns. Through analysis of data from Norwegian development projects in the petroleum industry, this paper investigates the common effect of business cycle developments on cost overruns. Lack of capacity and expertise in a tight supplier...

In this paper we challenge the view that the oil price has lost its influence on economic activity after the mid-1980s. While we concede that typical VAR models put forward in the literature fail to identify oil price shocks that significantly affect aggregate production, we obtain clearly...

Hamilton (2018) suggests that the Kilian (2009) index of global real economic activity is misleading and calls for alternative measures. The problem documented by Hamilton is a consequence of a coding mistake. Specifically, the index of nominal freight rates underlying the Kilian index was...

The Ifo Business Climate is the most important indicator for the business cycle in Germany. In 1993 the connection between the two components of the business climate - business situation and business expectations - was graphically portrayed by Ifo in a 4-quadrant scheme: the Ifo Business Cycle...

In this paper, an Unobserved Components Model is employed to decompose German real GDP into the trend, cycle and seasonal components and the working day effect. The most important findings are: 1) The growth rate of potential output declined from 4.2 per cent in the sixties to 1.4 per cent at...