Browsing by Subject "Business cycles"

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Business cycles and institutions : empirical analysis
(2017) Kufenko, Vadim; Hagemann, Harald
The cumulative dissertation covers diverse aspects of empirical analysis of business cycles and institutions. There are three research questions in focus. To address the interplay between business cycles and institutions, the first research question is formulated: could the Malthusian cycles be present in a frontier economy with abundance of land and which institutions could be responsible for the Malthusian regime and the transition from it? In order to consider the far-reaching implications of economic cycles for the development of economic thought, the second question is stated: can economic fluctuations quantitatively influence research output? To address the methodology of business cycle analysis, the third question is brought up: how may spurious periodicities emerge and how could one test for them? The main findings in the cumulative dissertation can be summarized as follows: i) it is shown that institutional arrangements may form economic constraints or build-up on the existing ones, responsible for the regimes in which cyclical fluctuations take place; ii) the interaction between the economic cycles and fluctuations in bibliometric variables representing research output in Economics as a science is analysed, and empirical evidence suggests the downswings of cycles stimulate more publications on the topic of crises and business cycles; iii) spurious periodicities emerge close to filtering bounds for real and simulated data after detrending, and it is demonstrated that simultaneous significance testing of spectral density peaks against the noise spectrum across different types of signals may help to reveal spurious periodicities.
Four essays in the empirical analysis of business cycles and structural breaks
(2015) Marczak, Martyna; Beißinger, Thomas
Business cycle analysis has a long history in the macroeconomics literature and since its origins it poses a challenge for both empirical and theoretical research. The enduring interest in this research area is dictated by its high relevance for economic policy. Reliable information on the state of the economy plays a crucial role in the monitoring of the economy and in the policy-making process. This involves the choice of the method for extraction of a proper business cycle indicator. Moreover, the business cycle analyst also has to take account of structural breaks as well as seasonal and higher frequency movements of the series that can affect the properties of a business cycle indicator. Another reason for the keen interest in empirical business cycle research can be seen in the need to validate theoretical approaches. A prominent example is the debate on the cyclical behavior of real wages which evolved to one of the most lively and long--lasting debates in macroeconomics. This thesis tries to contribute to the literature under the aforementioned aspects. It offers a new methodological perspective with respect to the extraction of business cycles and detection of structural breaks. Furthermore, it sheds some light on the question of real wage cyclicality from the empirical point of view. The first essay proposes a new multivariate model based on a band-pass filter to construct business cycle indicators. Using this method and a dataset with monthly and quarterly US time series, two monthly business cycle indicators are obtained for the US. It is shown that the proposed method not only reproduces historical recessions very well, but it also performs good in terms of forecasting. The second essay for the first time in the literature combines indicator saturation as a general-to-specific approach to detect outliers and structural breaks with the structural time series model for the purpose of seasonal adjustment. The performance of the impulse-indicator and step-indicator saturation for detecting additive outliers and level shifts is tested in both a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation exercise and an empirical application. The latter involves five European industrial production series. Its focus lies on the question whether the recessionary episode starting towards the end of 2008 can be described by the inherent model dynamics, or whether it represents a major structural change. In the third essay, stylized facts about the cyclicality of real consumer wages and real producer wages in Germany are established. First, various detrending methods are applied to estimate a business cycle and real wage cycles. The comovements between real wage cycles and the business cycle are then examined both in the time domain and in the frequency domain by resorting to the concept of the phase angle. According to the frequency domain results, the consumer real wage lags behind the business cycle. Moreover, it exhibits an anticyclical behavior in the short run, whereas in the longer run a procyclical behavior can be observed. For the producer real wage, in contrast, the results in the frequency domain are not clear-cut. The fourth essay compares the cyclical behavior of consumer and producer real wages in the USA and Germany. This study is the first one which employs wavelet analysis as a comovement tool in the context of the examined research question. From the findings of this study it can be inferred that the USA and Germany differ with respect to the lead-lag relationship of real wages and the business cycle. In the USA, both real wages are leading the business cycle in the entire time interval. The German consumer real wage is, on the other hand, lagging the business cycle. For the German producer real wage, the lead-lag pattern changes over time. In addition, the results show that real wages in the USA as well in Germany are procyclical or acyclical until 1980 and countercyclical thereafter.
Spurious periodicities in cliometric series : simultaneous testing
(2016) Kufenko, Vadim
In this paper we revisit the methodological aspects of the issue of spurious cycles: using the well-established clinometric data, we apply an empirical strategy to identify spurious periodicities and cross-validate the results. The analysis of cyclical fluctuations involves numerous challenges, including data preparation and detrending. As a result, there is a risk of statistical artifacts to arise: it is known that summation operators and filtering yield a red noise alike spectral signature, amplifying lower frequencies and thus, longer periodicity, whereas detrending using differencing yields a blue noise alike spectral signature, amplifying higher frequencies and thus, shorter periodicity. In our paper we explicitly address this issue. In order to derive the stationary signals to be tested, we perform outlier adjustment, derive cycles from the series with the asymmetric band pass Christiano-Fitzgerald filter using the upper bands of the Kuznets and the Juglar cycles as cut-offs, and obtain detrended prefiltered signals by differencing the series in the absence of fractional integration. Afterwards, we simultaneously test whether the spectral densities of filtered and detrended prefiltered signals are significantly different from the spectral density of the related noise. The periodicities from the Kuznets range were not simultaneously significant, and thus are likely to be spurious; whereas ones of the Juglar and Kitchin ranges were simultaneously significant. The simultaneous significance test helps to identify spurious periodicities and the results, in general, accord with the durations of the business cycles found in other works.
Stylized facts of the business cycle : universal phenomenon, or institutionally determined?
(2015) Kufenko, Vadim; Geiger, Niels
This paper empirically investigates and theoretically reflects on the generality of the “stylized facts” discussed in business cycle analysis. Using OECD data for 1960–2010, the duration of business cycles as well as three models capturing core macroeconomic relations are estimated: based on the Phillips curve (the inflation-unemployment nexus), Okun’s law (in the context of the relation between output growth and unemployment) and the inflation-output relation. Results are validated by relevant statistical tests. Observed durations vary from 4 to 8 years, and estimated coefficients differ in signs and magnitudes. Bearing these substantial variations in mind, an explanation of this heterogeneity is attempted by referring to proxies for various institutional variables for the goods, labour and money markets. The findings suggest that core coefficients in the relations, such as the slope of the Phillips curve, show significant correlation with some of these variables, but no uniform results are obtained. In the detailed theoretical discussion and interpretation it is thus argued that the notable differences between countries call the universality of the “stylized facts” into question, but also that these variations cannot be explained exhaustively by the institutional proxy variables employed here.