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...

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...

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,...

This paper studies the relationship between the change in the unemployment rate and output growth using an approach based on labor market flows. The framework shows why the Okun coefficient may be constant/time-varying and/or symmetric/asymmetric and that the outcome lies with the behavior of...

We introduce a Combined Density Nowcasting (CDN) approach to Dynamic Factor Models (DFM) that in a coherent way accounts for time-varying uncertainty of several model and data features in order to provide more accurate and complete density nowcasts. The combination weights are latent random...

Using a New-Keynesian framework, we investigate how far the inflationary processes in member states of EMU cause regional price levels to converge. We fail to produce hard evidence of the present existence of such an adjustment mechanism, notwithstanding that inflation in some countries tends to...