This paper presents insights on U.S. business cycle volatility since 1867 de- rived from diffusion indices. We employ a Bayesian dynamic factor model to obtain aggregate and sectoral economic activity indices. We find a remarkable increase in volatility across World War I, which is reversed...

This paper presents insights on U.S. business cycle volatility since 1867 de- rived from diffusion indices. We employ a Bayesian dynamic factor model to obtain aggregate and sectoral economic activity indices. We find a remarkable increase in volatility across World War I, which is reversed...

Using new quarterly U.S. data for the past 120 years, I show that sudden reversals in equity and credit market sentiment approximated by several measures of corporate securities issuance are highly predictive of banking crises and recessions. Deviations in equity issuance from historical...

Price indices for periods before the Second World War place more weight on less-processed products than do their post-war counterparts, to an extent that exaggerates the change over time in the composition of aggregate output. Prices of less-processed products are especially procyclical in...

A series of recent reviews of the depression of 1920-21 by Austrian School and libertarian economists have argued that the downturn demonstrates the poverty of Keynesian policy recommendations. However, these writers misrepresent important characteristics of the 1920-21 downturn, understating...

This paper analyses the monetary and fiscal policy implications of output gap estimates in times of crisis. The widening of output gaps observed in major OECD economies in the wake of the recent crisis has been mainly due to total factor productivity gaps, except in the United States where it...

The purpose of this research is to recommend theoretical and program basis for the new economic policy for the purposes of overcoming the recession and enabling the recovery of production in the Croatian economy. Furthermore, the goal is to show that the results of this study provide the...

The paper examines the role of fiscal and monetary policy on the dynamics of monetary expansion in a macroeconomy. Its microeconomic structure defined by producers with neoclassical production functions, heterogeneous OLG consumers, and a stationary fiscal and monetary policy induces a...

There is now considerable evidence that business cycle variation in output and employment in the U.S. differs in expansions and contractions. We present nonparametric evidence that asymmetries are strongest in durable goods manufacturing. In a Markov switching framework, we find two leading...

This paper discusses the paper "The Source of Historical Economic Fluctuations: An Analysis using Long-Run Restrictions" by Neville Francis and Valerie A. Ramey. It argues that these authors have made great progress both in the precise measurement of labor input as well as determining the effect...