We introduce a methodology to characterise financial cycles combining a novel multivariate spectral approach to identifying common cycle frequencies across a set of indicators, and a time varying aggregation emphasising systemic developments. The methodology is applied to 13 European Union...

The Basel III framework advises considering a reference indicator at the country level to guide the setting of the countercyclical capital buffer: the credit-to-GDP gap. In this paper, I provide empirical evidence suggesting that the credit-to-GDP gap is subject to spurious medium-term cycles,...

Hamilton (2018) proposes a regression filter (Hamilton filter) as an alternative to the Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP filter). Using frequency domain analysis, among others, I show that the Hamilton filter improves on the HP filter, because it does not induce spurious cycles and it has a smaller...

We show that one should not use the one-sided Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP-1s) as the real-time version of the two-sided Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP-2s): First, in terms of the extracted cyclical component, HP-1s fails to remove low-frequency fluctuations to the same extent as HP-2s. Second,...

I show that the detrending of financial variables with the Hodrick and Prescott (1981, 1997) (HP) and band-pass filters leads to spurious cycles. I find that distortions become especially severe when considering medium-term cycles, i.e., cycles that exceed the duration of regular business...

I show that the detrending of financial variables with the Hodrick and Prescott (1981, 1997) (HP) and band-pass filters leads to spurious cycles. I find that distortions become especially severe when considering medium-term cycles, i.e., cycles that exceed the duration of regular business...

Failing to account for joint dynamics of credit and asset prices can be hazardous for countercyclical macroprudential policy. We show that composite financial cycles, emphasising expansions and contractions common to credit and asset prices, powerfully predict systemic banking crises. Further,...

We propose the CoJPoD, a novel framework explicitly linking the cross-sectional and cyclical dimensions of systemic risk. In this framework, banking sector distress in the form of the joint probability of default of financial intermediaries (reflecting contagion from both direct and indirect...