Classification of German business cycles using monthly data

The recent renaissance of business cycle analysis has led to a renewed interest in business cycle classification as pioneered by Burns/Mitchell, Spiethoff and resumed in the seventies by Meyer/Weinberg (1975a, b). The rather successful elaboration and test of a “modern” four-phase classification scheme for the United States and West Germany by Meyer/Weinberg motivated the present authors to develop such a classification scheme for West Germany. Based on a kind of stylised facts it should help to translate the multifaced quantitative picture of the cycle into qualitative information.