Our study brings into light the evidence of a fundamental role of the Chinese renminbi in shaping the exchange rate behavior of other major Asian currencies. We obtain results suggesting that there is an additional dimension to the ‘fear of appreciation’ or ‘fear of floating in-reverse’...

This paper develops a Markov-Switching vector autoregressive model that allows for imperfect synchronization of cyclical regimes in multiple variables, due to phase shifts of a single common cycle. The model has three key features: (i) the amount of phase shift can be different across regimes...

This paper estimates Taylor rules featuring instabilities in policy parameters, switches in policy shocks' volatility, and time-varying trend inflation using post-WWII U.S. data. The model embedding the stochastic target performs better in terms of data-fit and identification of the changes in...

The dates of U.S. business cycle are reported by NBER with a considerable delay, so an early notion of turning points is of particular interest. This paper proposes a novel sequential approach designed for timely signaling these turning points. A directional cumulated sum decision rule is...

Empirical data analysis shows that the business cycles of industrialized nations demonstrate a fairly strong degree of synchronization in periods of growth, and a lesser degree of synchronization during periods of contraction. The current recession, however, breaks this pattern: the business...

In früheren Konjunkturzyklen war zu beobachten, dass sich ein Aufschwung in den Industriestaaten recht gleichmäßig verbreitete, während bei Rezessionen ein weniger ausgeprägter Gleichlauf zu beobachten war. In der derzeitigen Krise ist das allerdings anders: Sie zeichnet sich nicht nur...