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,...

Imposing cointegration on a forecasting system, if cointegration is present, is believed to improve long-horizon forecasts. Contrary to this belief, at long horizons nothing is lost by ignoring cointegration when the forecasts are evaluated using standard multivariate forecast accuracy measures....