Various methods are available to extract the “business cycle component” of a given time series variable. These methods may be derived as solutions to frequency extraction or signal extraction problems and differ in both their handling of trends and noise and their assumptions about the ideal...

We develop a dynamic factor model with Markov switching to examine secular and business cycle fluctuations in U.S. unemployment rates. We extract the common dynamics among unemployment rates disaggregated for seven age groups. The framework allows analysis of the contribution of demographic...

By historical standards, the U.S. economy has experienced a period of remarkable stability since the mid-1980s. One explanation attributes the diminished variability of economic activity to information-technology-led improvements in inventory management. Our results, however, indicate that the...

We estimate a New-Neoclassical Synthesis model of the business cycle with two investment shocks. The first, an investment-specific technology shock, affects the transformation of consumption into investment goods and is identified with the relative price of investment. The second shock affects...

No previous study has considered the intraday JPY/USD exchange rate responses to a broad set of comparable news surprises from both the U.S. and Japan. We attempt to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the effects of both U.S. and Japanese news surprises, measured as the difference...

The recession the United States economy entered in December of 2007 is considered to be the most severe downturn the country has experienced since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate reached as high as 10.1 percent in October 2009 - the highest we have seen since the 1982 recession. In...

This paper examines inflation dynamics in the Unites States since 1960, with a particular focus on the Great Recession. A puzzle emerges when Phillips curves estimated over 1960- 2007 are used to predict inflation over 2008-2010: inflation should have fallen by more than it did. We resolve this...

This paper contrasts the United States (US) and European situations during the crisis and examines how much of the crisis has been imported by Europe from the US. The paper argues that Europe never had a chance to avoid contagion from the US. It also documents the relatively limited reaction of...

This paper studies regime dependence in macroeconomic dynamics in the U.S. using a threshold vector autoregressive model in which endogenous regime switches are triggered by the inflation rate. The model separates a high from a low inflation regime with both regimes being strongly persistent....

The integration of China into the global economy is one of the most spectacular events in economic history. This paper investigates to what extent this process affects output growth and inflation in the advanced countries. A GVAR model is specified to explore interdependencies between business...