This paper proposes a novel derivation of the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) minimization problem which leads to a generalization of the Hodrick-Prescott filter. The main result is the development of a new filter to extract a localized maximum-likelihood estimate of the cycle from a series. This new...

Several recent studies show that seasonal variation and cyclical variation in unemployment are correlated. A common finding is that seasonality tends to differ across the business cycle stages of recessions and expansions. Since seasonal adjustment methods assume that the two sources of...

Search-theory has become the main paradigm for the micro-foundation of money. But no comprehensive business cycle analysis has been undertaken yet with a search-based monetary model. This paper extends the model with divisible goods and divisible money of Shi (JET, 1998) to allow for capital...

In this paper we examine differences in the unemployment rates across regions within the five largest metropolitan areas in Australia using pooled regression analysis. We find that the level of within-city dispersion is positively correlated with the city-wide unemploymentrate and that...

We identify the impact of short-term interest rates on credit risk-taking by analyzing a comprehensive credit register from Spain, a country where for the last twenty years monetary policy was mostly decided abroad. Discrete choice, within borrower comparison and duration analyses show that...

This paper reviews the theory and evidence concerning Political Business Cycles (PBC), which are based on the obvious facts of democratic life that voters care about the economy while politicians care about power. The first section provides an overview of different approaches to political...

This paper looks at a broad array of evidence concerning the recent boom in home prices, and considers what this means for future home prices and the economy. It does not appear possible to explain the boom in terms of fundamentals such as rents or construction costs. A psychological theory,...

This Selected Issues paper on the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) underlies key features of business cycles. To obtain new measures of classical and growth cycles, simple rules were applied to date turning points in the classical business cycle, and a recently developed frequency domain...

This Selected Issues paper first explains the recent increase in trend growth and then discusses how labor market and tax policies could best sustain it. This study calculates French trend growth estimating simultaneously a Cobb–Douglas production technology and total factor productivity....