We document the main features of financial cycles using a comprehensive database of credit, housing and equity prices. We report four major results. First, financial cycles can be protracted and costly episodes. Second, they can feed off each other and worsen, becoming financial crises. Third,...

We develop a dynamic factor model with time-varying factor loadings and stochastic volatility in both the latent factors and idiosyncratic components. We employ this new measurement tool to study the evolution of international business cycles in the post-Bretton Woods period, using a panel of...