We examine whether knowledge of in-sample co-movement across countries can be used in a more systematic way to improve forecast accuracy at the national level. In particular, we ask if a model with common international business cycle factors adds marginal predictive power compared to a domestic...

We define and forecast classical business cycle turning points for the Norwegian economy. When defining reference business cycles, we compare a univariate and a multivariate Bry-Boschan approach with univariate Markov-switching models and Markov-switching factor models. On the basis of a...