This comment is focused mainly on the assumption that the HP filter is appropriate for isolating the cyclical component inherent in the time series investigated. It is argued that mechanical filtering can easily generate a spurious impression of cyclical behaviour. Estimating the cyclical...

"History of Prices in Switzerland: 19th to 20th Century". Prices play an important role in market societies. The article illustrates the development of prices in Switzerland form the beginning of the 19th to the end of the 20th century. Important sources of price statistics as well as...

Although the long-wave phenomenon has long been discussed in economic, social and political sciences, there is still highly controversial discussion about the methods of providing empirical evidence of such swings as regular cycles in economic time series. This article gives an overview about...

Data protection has become an increasingly important aspect of consumer policy in recent years in Germany. One of the most interesting subjects under discussion was that of scoring. Scoring attempts to give a prognosis as to whether a consumer is willing and able to repay a given kind of credit....

Political parties in Germany reacted with numerous suggestions on the heavy losses for consumers in financial markets. Besides a more intensive regulation for financial services a number of new institutions were suggested, like installing a financial watchdog or a financial inspection agency or...

A large proportion of today’s econometric literature addresses the question of whether long run GDP follows a random walk or a log linear trend with one or more structural breaks. Much less attention is paid to the modelling of the long run trend and cycle component. In most studies, the trend...

[fre] La réponse à la question de savoir si les cycles longs existent ou non dépend principalement des méthodes statistiques utilisées pour les analyser. Depuis l’article fondateur de Kondratiev dans les années 1920, ces méthodes ont fait l’objet d’importants changements. La...

The answer to the question, whether long waves exist or not depends mainly on the statistical methods used for analysis. Since the seminal work of Kondratieff in the 1920th these methods underwent significant changes. The fundamental critic against the traditional approaches in the 1970th lead...