In this paper, we study the short-run and long-run comovement between prices and real activity in the G7 countries during the postwar period using vector autoregressive systems and frequency-domain filters. We find several patterns that are robust across countries and time periods. Typically,...

In this paper we investigate whether the dynamic properties of the U.S. business cycle have changed in the last fifty years. For this purpose we develop a flexible business cycle indicator that is constructed from a moderate set of macroeconomic time series. The coincident economic indicator is...

We adopt an unobserved components time series model to extract financial cycles for the United States and the five largest euro area countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We find that credit, the credit-to-GDP ratio and house prices have medium-term cycles which share a few common statistical...

This paper shows that the parsimoniously time-varying methodology of Callot and Kristensen (2015) can be applied to factor models. We apply this method to study macroeconomic instability in the US from 1959:1 to 2006:4 with a particular focus on the Great Moderation. Models with parsimoniously...

We investigate the presence of international business cycles in macroeconomic aggregates (output, consumption, investment) using a panel of 60 countries over the period 1961 - 2014. The paper presents a Bayesian stochastic factor selection approach for dynamic factor models with predetermined...

Cyclicality in the losses of bank loans is important for bank risk management. Because loans have a different risk profile than bonds, evidence of cyclicality in bond losses need not apply to loans. Based on unique data we show that the default rate and loss given default of bank loans share a...

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

Recessions and expansions are often caused or reinforced by developments in private consumption - the largest component of aggregate demand - which, as a result, varies over the business cycle. As such, an accurate measurement of the cyclical component of consumption and an understanding of its...

This paper investigates business cycle relations among different economies in theEuro area. Cyclical dynamics are explicitly modelled as part of a time series model. Weintroduce mechanisms that allow for increasing or diminishing phase shifts and for time-varyingassociation patterns in different...