Business cycles are highly irregular fluctuations in economic activity. This article attempts to determine whether there are some properties of business cycles that can make them look more regular. This is done by analysing business cycle dynamics, especially by employing and adjusting to...

Wir konstruieren ein neues Modell unbeobachteter Komponenten mit Markov-Switching zur Analyse von Hysterese-Effekten, also der Verfestigung ursprünglich zyklischer Fluktuationen. Das Modell kombiniert die Bestandteile einer Trend-Zyklus Zerlegung, der Identifikation von gegenseitigen...

A growing body of literature argues that the financial cycle is considerably longer in duration and larger in amplitude than the business cycle and that its distinguishing features became more pronounced over time. This paper proposes an empirical approach suitable to test these hypotheses. We...

A growing body of literature argues that the financial cycle is considerably longer in duration and larger in amplitude than the business cycle and that its distinguishing features became more pronounced over time. This paper proposes an empirical approach suitable to test these hypothe- ses. We...

We present a descriptive analysis of stylized facts for the German business cycle. We demonstrate that simple ad-hoc instructions for identifying univariate rules characterizing the German business cycle 1955-1994 lead to an error rate comparable to standard multivariate methods.