This paper is an exercise in dating the Euro area business cycle on a monthly basis. Using a quite flexible interpolation routine, we construct several monthly series of Euro area real GDP, and then apply the Bry-Boschan (1971) procedure. To account for the asymmetry in growth regimes and...

We examine how the occurrence of natural disasters impact the US economy and financial markets using monthly data since 2000. Our analysis reveals large sustained adverse effects of disasters on overall economic activity, with significant implications across various sectors including labor,...

This paper investigates whether the inherent non-stationarity of macroeconomic time series is entirely due to a random walk or also to non-linear components. Applying the numerical tools of the analysis of dynamical systems to long time series for the US, we reject the hypothesis that these...

Abstract: Grandmont (1985) found that the parameter space of the most classical dynamic general-equilibrium macroeconomic models are stratified into an infinite number of subsets supporting an infinite number of different kinds of dynamics, from monotonic stability at one extreme to chaos at the...

This paper studies the sequential sampling scheme as a solution to the problem of aliasing, where the sampling interval is restricted to a minimum allowable value. Sequential sampling is analyzed and it is proved that when the sampling ratio is an integral number, the associated spectral...

Recent events suggest that the death of the business cycle has been exaggerated; the issue of how one learns about and monitors the business cycle remains centre stage. Advent of the Euro and the potential for tensions when sovereign nations subsume their monetary policy into a single response...

A univariate first order stochastic cycle can be represented as an element of a bivariate first order vector autoregressive process, or VAR(1), where the transition matrix is associated with a Givens rotation. From the geometrical viewpoint, the kernel of the cyclical dynamics is described by a...

The Beveridge-Nelson decomposition defines the trend component in terms of the eventual forecast function, as the value the series would take if it were on its long-run path. The paper introduces the multistep Beveridge-Nelson decomposition, which arises when the forecast function is obtained by...

The paper concerns the design of nonparametric low-pass filters that have the property of reproducing a polynomial of a given degree. Two approaches are considered. The first is locally weighted polynomial regression (LWPR), which leads to linear filters depending on three parameters: the...

This paper reviews the possibility that Harvard barometers would have enabled to predict the Great Depression. Based on data from the ABC curves in August 1929, could have been foreseen the collapse of the stock market and the dramatic fall in economic activity?. It is now accepted that Harvard...