This paper characterizes business cycle phenomena in a sample of 22 developed and developing economies using a univariate Markov regime switching approach. It examines the efficacy of this approach for detecting business cycle turning points and for identifying distinct economic regimes for each...

This paper characterizes the business cycle as a recurring Markov chain for a broad set of developed and developing countries. The objective is to understand differences in cyclical phenomena across a broad range of countries based on the behavior of two key economic times series - industrial...

This paper investigates the relationship between the main business cycles features and the institutional and structural characteristics of countries in which they are observed. We derive the business cycle characteristics of the individual countries using the nonparametric Harding-Pagan...

This paper develops a set of leading indicators of industrial production growth and consumer price inflation for the period 2001-2010. The choice of indicators is based on pseudo out-of-sample forecasting exercise implemented by Stock and Watson (2003), amongst others. We find that asset prices...

We examine the relationship between institutions, culture and cyclical fluctuations for a sample of 45 European, Middle Eastern and North African countries. Better governance is associated with shorter and less severe contractions and milder expansions. Certain cultural traits, such as lack of...