The authors evaluate the ability of a simple real business cycle model to generate business cycles in the classical NBER sense of the term, where recessions are periods of absolute declines in economic activity. They use the 'phase' classification of Arthur F. Burns and Wesley C. Mitchell (1946)...

This paper provides a formal test of the null hypothesis of a unit root in the log-level of labor productivity against the alternative of linear trend stationarity with a one-time structural break in the level and slope of the trend at an a priori unknown date. Using some newly developed time...