Government spending has often varied with the business cycle to stimulate the economy and to revive economic conditions. However, the state of public finances has often necessitated higher borrowing to finance widening fiscal deficits. Indeed, recent austerity packages around the globe have...

The main purposes of this article are 3-fold. First, we construct measures of real and nominal effective exchange rates for 14 Middle East and North African countries over the 1970-2004 period. Second, we test the validity of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) by applying the ADF and KPSS tests...

Using data for a sample of 50 developing countries, the empirical investigation evaluates determinants and implications of asymmetric price flexibility. Price inflation is characterized by high flexibility to adjust towards full equilibrium. Further, price inflation accelerates flexibly with...

Currency depreciation reduces aggregate supply by raising cost of imported inputs and increases aggregate demand by increasing its net export component. Depending on the relative strength of the two effects, depreciation could be expansionary or contractionary. We employ the bounds testing...

Theoretical explanations appear in sharp contrast concerning the determinants of demand-driven industrial business cycles. Aggregate factors are likely to differentiate cyclical fluctuations for a given industry across countries. Industry-specific factors are likely to differentiate cyclical...

This article investigates the relation between the cyclical behaviour of employment composition and the weighted average (aggregate) real wage in the USA. Cyclicality of employment composition arises in the context of two competing explanations of business-cycle theory: the human capital...

The analysis focuses on the asymmetric effects of demand shocks. The evidence across a sample of 19 industrial countries differentiates the effects of expansionary and contractionary aggregate demand shocks on real output growth and nominal wage and price inflation. The difference appears...

Nominal wage and price adjustments in response to demand shocks are likely to determine industrial output variability. The direction of this relationship is complicated, however, by demand and supply factors. The empirical investigation across a sample of private industries in the United States...

We analyse the disinflationary experience between 1979-93 for two traditionally inflationary countries of the European Monetary System: France and Italy. For each country, a vector autoregressive model is estimated. Shocks in the model combine domestic and foreign sources. The latter capture the...

The evidence of business cycles across a sample of industrial countries indicates asymmetry in the output and price adjustments to aggregate demand shocks in the pre- and post-war periods. Upward price flexibility is significant in moderating output fluctuations across countries in the pre- and...