We show that one should not use the one-sided Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP-1s) as the real-time version of the two-sided Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP-2s): First, in terms of the extracted cyclical component, HP-1s fails to remove low-frequency fluctuations to the same extent as HP-2s. Second,...

This paper investigates multivariate Beveridge-Nelson decomposition of key macro aggregate data. We find (a) inflation seems to be dominated by its trend component, and, perhaps as a result of this, the short-term interest rate is also trend dominated; and (b) consumption also seems to be...

We model 1927-1997 U.S. business failure rates using a time series approach based on unobserved components. Clear evidence is found of cyclical behavior in default rates. The cycle has a period of around 10 years. We also detect longer term movements in default probabilities and default...