Various methods are available to extract the “business cycle component” of a given time series variable. These methods may be derived as solutions to frequency extraction or signal extraction problems and differ in both their handling of trends and noise and their assumptions about the ideal...

Short-term analysis is generally performed with seasonally adjusted data from which further estimation of the business cycle is performed through well-known filters (HP, Baxter-King). However, the whole procedure is not fully consistent, because seasonal adjustment and trend-cycle estimation do...

This paper investigates the properties of the decomposition of a time series presented in a companion paper (Lacroix, (2008)). The procedure relies upon an extension of Beveridge-Nelson methodology. We focus on its empirical implementation and show the need for additional steps in order to...

In this paper, I propose a simple methodology for inferring the correlation between permanent and transitory shocks in unidentified unobserved components (UC) models, where the correlation is not identified. However, I show that there is an upper bound of the correlation implied from the...

Unit root tests against trend break alternatives are based on the premise that the dating of the trend breaks coincides with major economic events with permanent effects on economic activity, such as wars and depressions. Standard economic theory, however, suggests that these events have large...

The authors use first differenced logged quarterly series for the GDP of 29 countries and the euro area to assess the need to use nonlinear models to describe business cycle dynamic behaviour. Their approach is model (estimation)-free, based on testing only. The authors aim to maximize power to...

A growing number of empirical studies provides evidence that dynamic properties of macroeconomic time series have been changing over time. Model-based procedures for the measurement of business cycles should therefore allow model parameters to adapt over time. In this paper the time dependencies...

We establish that the Phillips curve is persistence-dependent: inflation responds differently to persistent versus moderately persistent (or versus transient) fluctuations in the unemployment gap. Previous work fails to model this dependence, so it finds numerous “inflation puzzles”—such...

This paper examines the frequency-domain implications of the serial correlation common feature in order to evaluate its merits as an indicator of common business cycles among economic variables. It is shown that the presence of the serial correlation common feature in the first differences of a...

Econometric issues in the estimation of persistence in macroeconomic time series are considered. In particular, the relative merits of estimates based on ARMA models, ARFIMA models and nonparametric procedures are investigated. It is shown that ARFIMA models are inappropriate for the purpose of...