We study the properties of the IMF-WEO estimates of real-time output gaps for countries in the euro area as well as the determinants of their revisions over 1994-2017. The analysis shows that staff typically saw economies as operating below their potential. In real time, output gaps tend to have...

The Global Financial Crisis established that policymakers should consider the stage of the financial cycle to better evaluate the cyclical position of the economy when designing monetary policy decisions. If financial variables are omitted from the estimations of the output gap, a common and...

The aim of this paper is to analyze how aggregate activity in Lebanon fluctuates with regard to recurrent shocks. The research starts by identifying the Lebanese economic business cycle from the first quarter of 1998 to the fourth quarter of 2015 adopting a statistical method. Furthermore, this...