The Swiss debt brake is a fiscal rule at central government level which aims at stabilizing debt. However, business cycle fluctuations are also accounted for. This paper discusses criticism of the debt brake that it cannot feasibly simultaneously achieve either anti-cyclical or sustainable...

Business-cycle adjustment is mostly determined via filter methods, especially the HP filter, or, e.g. within the EU fiscal rules, by a production function approach. James Hamilton put big doubt on the quality of the HP filter estimates, and proposed an alternative regression approach to...

On the basis of keyword searches in newspaper articles several versions of the Recession-word Index (RWI) are constructed for Germany and Switzerland. We use these indices in order to track the business cycle dynamics in these two countries. Our main findings are the following. First, we show...

On the basis of keyword searches in newspaper articles, several versions of the Recession-Word Index (RWI) are constructed for Germany and Switzerland. We use these indices in order to track the business cycle dynamics in these two countries. Our main findings are the following. First, we show...