Search results for "Business cycles"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
Wesley Mitchell, Arthur Burns and Trygve Haavelmo on business cycles The two Encyclopaedia of the social sciences (1930–1935 and 1968)
2012
The paper presents a brief reconstruction of the history of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1930-1935 and 1968) a 15 volume major editorial enterprise that was accomplished under the direction of Columbia economist E.R.A. Seligman. It then provides an analysis of the main entries that were devoted to business cycle theory, namely those by Wesley C. Mitchell, Arthur Burns and Trygve Haavelmo.
Business Cycles Synchronization in the EMU
2008
This article asks whether the business cycles of the EU countries have become more or less synchronized after the introduction of the euro. Our findings show that all countries in our EU sample are better synchronized with the EMU-wide economy in the post-EMU period than they were before the euro. We also show that this increase in synchronization is present in all components of aggregate demand, as well as two supply-side variables, but it is more pronounced in the trade components (imports and, particularly, exports). It is also shown that the increase in trade within the EMU area is at least partly responsible for the increase in cyclical synchronization.
Comparative Economic Cycles
2008
The income cycles that have been experienced by six OECD countries over the past 24 years are analysed. The amplitude of the cycles relative to the level of aggregate income varies amongst the countries, as does the degree of the damping that affects the cycles. The study aims to reveal both of these characteristics. It also seeks to determine whether there exists a clear relationship between the degree of damping and the length of the cycles. In order to estimate the parameters of the cycles, the data have been subjected to the processes of detrending, anti-alias filtering and subsampling.
Business Cycle Affiliations in the Context of European Integration
2003
We study affiliations for the countries of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) with Germany and the US, using various business cycle measures derived from quarterly real GDP. These measures are Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King filtered series, together with annual and quarterly growth rates. Using rolling contemporaneous and maximum (over a short lead/lag interval) correlations, we document increasing correlations of EMU countries with Germany, with these typically being largest during the 1990s. We also document a strong leading role for the US in relation to these countries in the period since 1993, thereby correcting the fallacy that the European business cycle was disjoint fr…
Inflation dynamics in a model with firm entry and (some) heterogeneity
2014
We analyse the incidence of endogenous entry and firm TFP-heterogeneity on the response of aggregate inflation to exogenous shocks. We build up an otherwise standard DSGE model in which the number of firms is endogenously determined and firms differ in their steady state level of productivity. This splits the industry structure into firms of different sizes. Calibrating the different transition rates, across firm sizes and out of the market we reproduce the main features of the distribution of firms in Spain. We then compare the inflation response to technology, interest rate and entry cost shocks, among others. We find that structures in which large (more productive) firms predominate tend…
A Long Term View on the Short Term Co-movement of Output and Prices in a Small Open Economy
2012
- One assumption behind inflation targeting as objective for monetary policy is that inflation rates in the short run to some extent reflect output cycles. The present paper investigates the historical co-movements of output and prices for a small open raw material based economy, in this case Norway 1830 – 2006. Looking at contemporaneous movements we find more often negative correlations between the two variables than positive. The correlations do not give any evidence of causality. However, they may indicate that supply side shocks, often caused by the foreign sector, were more important for historical output cycles in Norway than assumed hitherto
The International Business Cycle in a Changing World: Volatility and the Propagation of Shocks
2003
This paper examines the changing relationships between the G-7 countries through VAR models for the quarterly growth rates, estimated both over sub-periods and using a rolling data window. Six trivariate models are estimated, all of which include the US and a European (E15) aggregate. In relative terms, the conditional volatility of E15 growth has declined more since 1980 than the well-documented decline for the US. The propagation of shocks has also changed, with the volatility and propagation effects separated by applying shocks of pre-1980 magnitude to VARs estimated over various periods. Rolling estimation reveals that E15 has a steadily increasing impact on the US economy over time, wh…
Effects of external imbalances on GDP recovery patterns
2021
Abstract A decade after the beginning of the Great Recession, flow external imbalances, measured by the current account (CA) have narrowed markedly. However, stock or net foreign assets (NFA) imbalances have kept increasing and have created challenges for future macroeconomic and financial stability. To date, early warning systems (scoreboards) have focused more on flow than on stock variables. To approach this problem, in this paper we analyze expansions using two complementary sets of indicators proposed by Harding and Pagan (2002) and Gadea et al. (2017) for the period 1950–2016. After controlling for a large set of explanatory variables, we find that the effect of CA imbalances is limit…
Trends and cycles in U.S. job mobility
2021
Recent studies document a decline in U.S. labor-market fluidity from as early as the 1970s on. Making use of the Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), I uncover a pronounced increase in job-to-job mobility from the 1970s to the 1990s, i.e., the annual share of continuously employed job-to-job movers rises from 5.9 percent of the labor force in 1975–1979 to 8.8 percent in 1995–1999. Job-to-job mobility exhibits a downward trend only since the turn of the millennium. In order to provide a formal economic interpretation, I additionally estimate the parameters of the random on-the-job search model. Furthermore, I document that job-to-job mobility h…
Essays on labour market institutions and macroeconomic dynamics
2019
Labour market reforms play an important role in the public debate and policy recommendations. This thesis aims to find evidence on how labour market institutions are related to economic dynamics and adjustment. The thesis contains an introductory chapter and three essays. The first essay uses data of OECD countries to study whether differences in labour market institutions explain the differences in business cycle dynamics across OECD countries. The second and third essays use theoretical models to study centralized wage-setting and wage-setting coordination. The results of the first essay suggest that labour market institution variables have explanatory power for the heterogeneity in the v…