Business surveys are an important element in the analysis of the short-term economic situation because of the timeliness and nature of the information they convey. Especially, surveys are often involved in econometric models in order to provide an early assessment of the current state of the...

This paper considers Beveridge-Nelson decomposition in a context where the permanent and transitory components both follow a Markov switching process. Our approach insorporates Markov switching into a single source of error state-space framework, allowing business cycle asymmetries and regime...

We use a long series of annual data that span over 100 years to examine the relationship between output growth and its uncertainty in five European countries. Using the GARCH methodology to proxy uncertainty, we obtain two important results. First, more uncertainty about output leads to a higher...

This Paper reviews recent econometric work on factor models in large cross-sections of time series. In this literature, traditional factor analysis is adapted to develop parsimonious estimation methods for high dimension time series models. The review covers problems of consistency and rates –...

The correlation of Australian output with that of the OECD, and the United States in particular, has been well documented. This paper explores foreign linkages by looking at the production side of the national accounts for Australia and the United States, which is often characterised as the...

An examination of Swedish manufacturing data on real output and qualitative business tendency survey (BTS) responses from 1968 through 1998 reveals that survey-based attitude data typically improve the fit of simple autoprojective models of manufacturing output growth. It also turns out that...

Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filtering of (most often, seasonally adjusted) quarterly series is analysed. Some of the criticism to the filter are adressed. It is seen that, while filtering strongly affects autocorrelations, it has little effect on crosscorrelations. It is argued that the criticism that...

This paper examines the frequency-domain implications of the serial correlation common feature in order to evaluate its merits as an indicator of common business cycles among economic variables. It is shown that the presence of the serial correlation common feature in the first differences of a...

Econometric issues in the estimation of persistence in macroeconomic time series are considered. In particular, the relative merits of estimates based on ARMA models, ARFIMA models and nonparametric procedures are investigated. It is shown that ARFIMA models are inappropriate for the purpose of...

This paper offers an insight into the optimality of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and its common monetary policies by evaluating the degree of business cycle synchronisation among the EMU member states with respect to the Eurozone aggregate. Business cycles for each country,...