E32 Business Fluctuations; Cycles

August 15, 2010

Understanding the joint dynamics of international prices and quantities remains a central issue in international business cycles. International relative prices appreciate when domestic consumption and output increase more than their foreign counterparts. In addition, both trade flows and trade prices display sizable volatility. This paper incorporates Hicks-neutral and investment-specific technology shocks into a standard two-country general equilibrium model with variable capacity utilization and weak wealth effects on labor supply. Investment-specific technology shocks introduce a source of fluctuations in absorption similar to taste shocks, thus reconciling theory and data. The paper also presents implications for the transmission mechanism of technology shocks across countries and for the Barro and King (1984) critique of investment shocks.

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August 1, 2010

This paper characterizes business cycle phenomena in a sample of 27 developed and developing economies using a univariate Markov regime switching approach. It examines the efficacy of this approach for detecting business cycle turning points and for identifying distinct economic regimes for each country in question. The paper also provides a comparison of the business cycle turning points implied by this study and those derived in other studies. Our findings document the importance of heterogeneity of individual countries’ experiences. We also argue that consideration of a large and diverse group of countries provides an alternative perspective on the comovement of aggregate economic activity worldwide.

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August 1, 2010

This paper studies business cycle interdependence among the industrialized countries since 1958. Using the spillover index methodology recently proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009) and based on the generalized VAR framework, I develop an alternative measure of comovement of macroeconomic aggregates across countries. I have several important results. First, the spillover index fluctuates over time, increasing substantially following the post-1973 U.S. recessions. Secondly, the band within which the spillover index fluctuates follows an upward trend since the start of the globalization process in the early 1990s. Thirdly, the spillover index recorded the sharpest increase ever following the peak of the global financial crisis in September 2008, reaching a record level as of December 2008 (See http://data.economicresearchforum.org/erf/bcspill.aspx?lang=en for updates of the spillover plot). I also derive measures of directional spillovers and show that the U.S. (1980s and 2000s) and Japan (1970s and 2000s) are major transmitters of shocks to other countries. Finally, during the 2008-2009 global recession shocks mostly originated from the United States and spread to other industrialized countries.

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March 9, 2010

Psychological factors, market sentiments, and shifts in beliefs are believed by many to play a nontrivial role in inducing and amplifying economic fluctuations. Yet, these forces are rarely considered in macroeconomic models. This paper provides an attempt to evaluate the empirical role of expectational shocks on business cycle fluctuations. The paper relaxes the conventional assumption of rational expectations to exploit observed data on survey and market expectations in the estimation of a benchmark New Keynesian model. The observed expectations are modeled as formed from a near-rational expectation formation mechanism, which assumes that economic agents use a linear perceived law of motion for economic variables that has the same structural form as the model solution under rational expectations and that they need to learn model coefficients over time. In addition to the typical structural demand, supply, and policy disturbances, the model incorporates expectation shocks, which affect the formation of expectations by the private sector. Both the best-fitting learning process and the expectations shocks are identified from the expectations data and from the interaction between expectations and realized data. The expectations shocks capture waves of optimism and pessimism that lead agents to form forecasts that deviate from those implied by their learning model and by the state of the economy. The empirical results uncover a crucial role for these novel expectations shocks as a major driving force of the U.S. business cycle. Expectation shocks regarding future real activity are the main source of economic fluctuations, since they can account for roughly half of business cycle fluctuations.

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November 1, 2009

The paper shows that US GDP velocity of M1 money has exhibited long cycles around a 1.25% per year upward trend, during the 1919-2004 period. It explains the velocity cycles through shocks constructed from a DSGE model and annual time series data (Ingram et al., 1994). Model velocity is stable along the balanced growth path, which features endogenous growth and decentralized banking that produces exchange credit. Positive shocks to credit productivity and money supply increase velocity, as money demand falls, while a positive goods productivity shock raises temporary output and velocity. The paper explains such velocity volatility at both business cycle and long run frequencies. With filtered velocity turning negative, starting during the 1930s and the 1987 crashes, and again around 2003, results suggest that the money and credit shocks appear to be more important for velocity during less stable times and the goods productivity shock more important during stable times.

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July 1, 2009

In addition to quantitative assessment of economic growth using econometric models, business cycle analyses have been proved to be helpful to practitioners in order to assess current economic conditions or to anticipate upcoming fluctuations. In this paper, we focus on the acceleration cycle in the euro area, namely the peaks and troughs of the growth rate which delimitate the slowdown and acceleration phases of the economy. Our aim is twofold: First, we put forward a reference turning point chronology of this cycle on a monthly basis, based on gross domestic product and industrial production index. We consider both euro area aggregate level and country specific cycles for the six main countries of the zone. Second, we come up with a new turning point indicator, based on business surveys carefully watched by central banks and short-term analysts, in order to follow in real-time the fluctuations of the acceleration cycle.

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March 1, 2009

In this paper, we perform a structural Bayesian estimation of the contribution of anticipated shocks to business cycles in the postwar United States. Our theoretical framework is a real-business-cycle model augmented with four real rigidities: investment adjustment costs, variable capacity utilization, habit formation in consumption, and habit formation in leisure. Business cycles are assumed to be driven by permanent and stationary neutral productivity shocks, permanent investment-specific shocks, and government spending shocks. Each of these driving forces is buffeted by four types of structural innovations: unanticipated innovations and innovations anticipated one, two, and three quarters in advance. We find that anticipated shocks account for more than two thirds of predicted aggregate fluctuations.

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July 1, 2009

This paper aims to shed light on potential pitfalls of different data filtering and detrending procedures for the estimation of stationary DSGE models. For this purpose, a medium-sized New Keynesian model as the one developed by Smets and Wouters (2003) is used to assess the sensitivity of the structural estimates to preliminary data transformations. To examine the question, we focus on two widely used detrending and filtering methods, the HP filter and linear detrending. After comparing the properties of business cycle components, we estimate the model through Bayesian techniques using in turn the two different sets of transformed data. Empirical findings show that posterior distributions of structural parameters are rather sensitive to the choice of detrending. As a consequence, both the magnitude and the persistence of theoretical responses to shocks depend upon preliminary filtering.

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November 1, 2008

This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries' business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant change associated with the EMU can be detected. For the other countries, volatility has been historically higher and this has not changed in the last ten years. We also find that the aggregate euro area per-capita GDP growth since 1999 has been lower than what could have been predicted on the basis of historical experience and US observed developments. The gap between US and euro area GDP per capita level has been 30% on average since 1970 and there is no sign of catching up or of further widening.

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March 1, 2009

We propose a method to estimate time invariant cyclical DSGE models using the information provided by a variety of filtering approaches. We treat data filtered with alternative procedures as contaminated proxy of the relevant model-based quantities and estimate structural and non-structural parameters jointly using an unobservable component structure. We employ simulated data to illustrate the properties of the procedure and compare our estimates with those obtained when just one filter is used. We revisit the role of money in the transmission of monetary business cycles.

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