This dissertation proposes a dynamic factor model with regime switching as an empirical characterization of business cycles. The approach integrates the idea of comovements among macroeconomic variables and asymmetries of business cycle expansions and contractions. The first is captured with an...

Multiple-equilibria macroeconomic models suggest that consumers' and investors' perceptions about the state of the economy may be an important independent factor for business cycles. In this paper, we verify empirically the interrelations between waves of optimism and pessimism and subsequent...

This paper compares the different dynamics of the simple sum monetary aggregates and the Divisia monetary aggregate indexes over time, over the business cycle, and across high and low inflation and interest rate phases. Although traditional comparisons of the series sometimes suggest that simple...

This paper compares the different dynamics of simple sum monetary aggregates and the Divisia indexes over time, over the business cycle, and across high and low inflation and interest rate phases. Although the traditional comparison of the series may suggest that they share similar dynamics,...

This paper compares the different dynamics of the simple sum monetary aggregates and the Divisia monetary aggregate indexes over time, over the business cycle, and across high and low inflation and interest rate phases. Although traditional comparisons of the series sometimes suggest that simple...

The current financial crisis followed the “great moderation,” according to which the world’s central banks had gotten so good at countercyclical policy that the business cycle no longer existed. As more and more economists and media people became convinced that the risk of recessions had...

We develop a dynamic factor model with Markov switching to examine secular and business cycle fluctuations in the U.S. unemployment rates. We extract the common dynamics amongst unemployment rates disaggregated for 7 age groups. The framework allows analysis of the contribution of demographic...

This paper proposes an econometric model of the joint dynamic relationship between the yield curve and the economy to predict business cycles. We examine the predictive value of the yield curve to forecast both future economic growth as well as the beginning and end of economic recessions at the...