This paper contributes to the literature on the role of technology shocks as source of the business cycle in two ways. First, we document that time-series of US productivity and hours are apparently affected by a structural break in the late 60's, which is likely due to a major change in the...

Combining economic time series with the aim to obtain an indicator for business cycle analyses is an important issue for policy makers. In this area, econometric techniques usually rely on systems with either a small number of series, N, (VAR or VECM) or, at the other extreme, a very large N...