This article presents a new type of business-cycle index that allows for cycle-to-cycle comparisons of the depth of recessions within a country, cross-country comparisons of business-cycle correlation and simple aggregation to arrive at a measure of a European business cycle. The paper examines...

The authors investigate the basic nominal stylized facts of business cycles in the United States, using monthly data from 1960:1 to 1993:4 and the methodology suggested by Kydland and Prescott (1990). They make comparisons among simple sum and Divisia aggregates, using the Thornton and Yue...

We include learning in a standard equilibrium business cycle model with explicit growth. We use the model to study how the economy's agents could learn in real time about the important trend-changing events of the postwar era in the U.S., such as the productivity slowdown, increased labor force...

We study a general equilibrium model where the multiplicity of stationary periodic perfect foresight equilibria is pervasive. We investigate the extent of which agents can learn to coordinate on stationary perfect foresight cycles. The example economy, taken from Grandmont (1985), is an...

This paper uses a Markov-switching model with structural breaks to characterize and compare regional business cycles in Japan for 1976-2005. An early 1990s structural break meant a reduction in national and regional growth rates in expansion and recession, usually resulting in an increase in the...

This paper documents changes in the cyclical behavior of nominal data series that appear after 1979:Q3 when the Federal Reserve implemented a policy to lower the inflation rate. Such changes were not apparent in real variables. A business cycle model with impulses to technology and a role for...

Recent research showing negative correlations between detrended output and prices during the postwar period has brought into question the conventional wisdom that prices are procyclical. However, this finding has been shown to be sensitive to the sample period considered. This paper examines the...

It is widely believed in the literature that inventory fluctuations are destabilizing to the economy. This paper re-assesses this view by developing an analytically-tractable general-equilibrium model of inventory dynamics based on a precautionary stockout-avoidance motive. The model's...

Using a Bayesian model comparison strategy, we search for a volatility reduction within the post-war sample for the growth rates of U.S. aggregate and disaggregate real GDP. We find that the growth rate of aggregate real GDP has been less volatile since the early 1980s, and that this volatility...