In order to replace the univariate indicators standard in the literature (cp. [Opp96]) by a multivariate representation of business cycles, the relevant 'stylized facts' are to be identified which optimally characterize the development of business cycle phases. Based on statistical...

When comparing methods for classification, often the rating relies on their prediction accuracy alone. One reason for this is that this is the aspect that can be most easily measured. Yet, often one wants to learn more about the problem than only how to predict. The interpretation of the...

We propose multivariate classification as a statistical tool to describe business cycles. These cycles are often analyzed as a univariate phenomenon in terms of GNP or industrial net production ignoring additional information in other economic variables. Multivariate classification overcomes...

We investigate the combination of the dimension reduction methods SIR (Li, 1991) and DAME (Gather et al., 2001) with fuzzy-clustering to validate a given classification. We consider certain economic variables which are assumed to contain the information relevant to determine the current phase of...

This paper illustrates the Support Vector Method for the classification problem with two and more classes. In particular, the multi-class classification Support Vector Method of Weston and Watkins (1998) is correctly formulated as a quadratic optimization problem. Then, the method is applied to...

The classical approach to testing for structural change employs retrospective tests using a historical data set of a given length. Here we consider a wide array of fluctuation-type tests in a monitoring situation – given a history period for which a regression relationship is known to be...

In this paper business cycles are considered as a multivariate phenomenon and not as a univariate one determined e.g. by the GNP. The subject is to look for the number of phases of a business cycle, which can be motivated by the number of clusters in a given dataset of macro-economic variables....

We use Dynamic Bayesian networks to classify business cycle phases. We compare classifiers generated by learning the Dynamic Bayesian network structure on different sets of admissible network structures. Included are sets of network structures of the Tree Augmented Naive Bayes (TAN) classifiers...