This contribution investigates the business cycles of Switzerland compared to its five neighboring countries Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Liechtenstein. In contrast to the widespread notion of small countries “importing” the business cycle from bigger neighbors, it is shown that the...

This paper studies linear and nonlinear autoregressive leading indicator models of business cycles in G7 countries. The models use the spread between short-term and long-term interest rates as leading indicators for GDP, and their success in capturing business cycles is gauged by non-parametric...

This paper studies linear and linear autoregressive leading indicator models of business cycles in OECD countries. The models use the spread between short-term and long-term interest rates as leading indicators for GDP, and their success in capturing business cycles gauged by the non-parametric...

In this Paper we present two new composite leading indicators of economic activity in Germany estimated using a dynamic factor model with and without regime switching. The obtained optimal inferences of business cycle turning points indicate that the two-state regime switching procedure leads to...

This contribution investigates the business cycles of Switzerland compared to its five neighboring countries Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Liechtenstein. In contrast to the widespread notion of small countries "importing" the business cycle from bigger neighbors, it is shown that the real...

It has been shown that under perfect competition and a Cobb-Douglas production function, a basic real business cycle model may exhibit indeterminacy and sunspot fluctuations when income tax rates are determined by a balanced-budget rule. This paper introduces in an otherwise standard real...

The economic literature started to recognize the heterogeneity characterizing the nature of different technologies, introducing the concept of General Purpose Technologies. In this paper, we offer a new view of General Purpose Technologies, building on the historical as well as on the recent...

Like other macroeconomic variables, residential investment has become much less volatile since the mid-1980s (recent experience notwithstanding.) This paper explores the role of structural change in this decline. Since the the early 1980s there have been many changes in the underlying structure...

Existing results on the contribution of terms of trade and world interest rate shocks to output fluctuations in small open economies range from less than 10% to almost 90%. We argue that an identification problems lies at the heart of these vastly different results. In this paper, we overcome...