GDP per worker fell for the five years after 2008 which is unprecedented in post war UK history. In this paper we argue that "capital shallowing" (i.e. the fall in the capital-labour ratio) could be the main reason for this. This is likely to have occurred due to changes in factor prices: a...

Theoretical predictions of the effect of TFP growth on employment are ambiguous, anddepend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs. We estimate amodel for employment, wages and investment with an annual panel for the United States,Japan and Europe and find that TFP growth...

This paper seeks to elaborate econometric models that can be used to forecast the turning points of the Belgian business cycle. We begin by suggesting three reference cycle, which we hope will fill the void of an official reference chronology for Belgium. We then construct two different types of...

The paper introduces a two-factor model of the common leading and coincident economic indicators. Both factors are unobserved and each of them captures the dynamics of a corresponding group of the observed time series. The common leading factor is assumed to Granger-cause the common coincident...

Composite economic indicator is a very useful tool designed to trace and predict the business cycle conditions. In this paper we study possible extensions of this approach intended to cope with the potential data problems caused by various structural breaks affecting both level and volatility of...

The analysis and prediction of the short-run economic dynamics, or the evolution of the business cycle, often require a construction of the composite economic indicator (CEI). This indicator may be endowed with nonlinear dynamics to take care of the possible asymmetries between different phases...

Two extensions of a parametric model are proposed, each one involving the score function of an alternative parametric model. We show that the encompassing hypothesis is equivalent to standard conditions on the score of each of the extended models. The condition on the first extension gives rise...

In this paper, we consider a coincident economic indicator model with regime-switching dynamics and with the time series observed at different frequencies, for instance, at monthly and quarterly frequencies. Until now the only solution was to drop the lower frequency series and to estimate the...

In this paper we identify and try to predict the turning points of the Japanese business cycle. As a measure of the business cycle we use a composite economic indicator (CEI). This indicator is endowed with nonlinear dynamics to capture the asymmetries between different cyclical phases. Two...

We use a new industry-level dataset to quantify the role of ICT in explaining productivity growth in the UK, 1970-2000. The dataset is for 34 industries covering the whole economy (31 in the market sector). Using growth accounting, we find that ICT capital played an increasingly important, and...