When similar patterns of expansion and contraction are observed across sectors, we call this a business cycle. Yet explaining the similarity and synchronization of these cycles across industries remains a puzzle. Whereas output growth across industries is highly correlated, identifiable shocks,...

This paper exploits business cycle asymmetry observed in data, namely, a systematic shift in the dynamic relationship between the output and the interest rate spread across expansionary and contractionary periods in forecasting monthly industrial production. A bivariate model of monthly...

Whether prices are pro- or counter-cyclical represents a major difference in the predictions of models that focus on aggregate demand shocks as the primary source of business cycle fluctuations, versus those that emphasize shocks to aggregate supply. Earlier studies have interpreted their...

This paper investigates whether an asymmetry is present in the Granger-causal relationship between output and a set of interest rates and their spreads, across expansionary and contractionary business cycle phases in post 1950 U.S. Non-structural VAR models of monthly industrial production and...

The time series literature reports two stylized facts about output dynamics in the United States. GNP growth is positively autocorrelated over short horizons and negatively autocorrelated over longer horizons, and GNP has an important trend reverting component which has a hump-shaped moving...

This paper studies the effects of applying the Hodrick-Prescott filter to trend and difference stationary time series. Applying the Hodrick-Prescott filter to an integrated process is similar to detrending a random walk. When the data are difference stationary, the Hodrick-Prescott filter can...

A dynamic general equilibrium economy in which output is exogenous with respect to money is calibrated and simulated following a procedure commonly used in real business cycle literature. It is then confronted with the key comovement patterns of output and nominal variables in the post-war U.S....

This paper studies a class of models developed by Townsend (1993) and Sargent (1991). These models feature dynamic signal extraction problems in which firms with heterogeneous information draw inferences from endogenously generated time series about the value of common persistent shock. Because...