We estimate output growth rate spectra for 58 countries. The spectra exhibit diverse shapes. To study the sources of this diversity, we estimate the short-run, business cycle, and long-run frequency components of the sampled series. For most OECD countries the bulk of the spectral mass is in the...

This paper investigates the relationship between bilateral FDI positions and cross-country business cycle correlations in the period 1982–2001. We find that countries that have comparatively intensive FDI relations also have more synchronized business cycles during 1995–2001. Before 1995, we...

The paper deals with the application of Minimum Weighted Residual Methods (MWR) in intertemporal optimizing models of endogenous economic growth. In the 1st part of the paper the basics of the MWR method are described. Attention is mainly concentrated on one special class of MWR methods: the...

Wavelet analysis, although used extensively in disciplines such as signal processing, engineering, medical sciences, physics and astronomy, has not yet fully entered the economics discipline. In this discussion paper, wavelet analysis is introduced in an intuitive manner, and the existing...

In this paper we consider the problem of sequential detecting change points in economic time series. We compare the performances of three well known procedures, Shiryayev-Roberts, CUSUM and EWMA, in the problem of early detection of the US business cycle turning points using leading indicators...

The paper investigates the relationship between relative price movements and changes in the aggregate price level using monthly data on Finland’s Consumer Price Index and its components from the period covering the past eight and a half years. This was a period of very low inflation. The rate...

Lucas (2004) asserts that 'Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion, the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution...The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current...

Monetary models of the business cycle often neglect the importance of investment and the capital stock in the monetary transmission mechanism. Most of the recent literature assumes either investment adjustment costs or ignores capital altogether. This paper re-takes the argument put forward by...

Social learning models of investment provide an interesting alternative explanation for sudden changes in investment behaviour. Caplin and Leahy (1994) develop a model of social learning in which agents learn about the true state of demand from the investment suspension decisions of other...

Linear and Hodrick-Prescott detrending methods do not provide a good approximation of the business cycle when output contains a unit root. I use the multivariate Beveridge-Nelson decomposition to document the main patterns of US postwar business cycles when output and some other variables are...