The business cycle has long been the focus of empirical economic research. Until recently statistical analysis of macroeconomic fluctuations was dominated by linear time series methods. Over the past 15 years, however, economists have increasingly applied tractable parametric nonlinear time...

1 Introduction -- 2 ‘Classical’ Techniques of Modelling Trends and Cycles -- 3 Stochastic Trends and Cycles -- 4 Filtering Economic Time Series -- 5 Nonlinear and Nonparametric Trend and Cycle Modelling -- 6 Multivariate Modelling of Trends and Cycles -- 7 Conclusions.

Modelling trends and cycles in economic time series has a long history, with the use of linear trends and moving averages forming the basic tool kit of economists until the 1970s. Several developments in econometrics then led to an overhaul of the techniques used to extract trends and cycles...

This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of the co-movement of economic activity between regions in the European Union and the Euro Area. Using a panel data of 208 EU-15 regions over the period 1989-2002 we estimate a system of four simultaneous equations to analyse the impact of...

We study the features of regional business cycles and growth in Japan. We find evidence of unconditional convergence over the 1955-2008 period. For the 1975-2008 period, we find evidence of convergence conditional on TFP gap, population growth, private investment rate and TFP growth. We also...