This paper argues that incorporating information about the financial cycle is important to improve measures of potential output and output gaps. Conceptually, identifying potential output with non-inflationary output is too restrictive. Potential output is seen as sustainable; yet experience...

This paper argues that incorporating information about the financial cycle is important to improve measures of potential output and output gaps. Conceptually, identifying potential output with non-inflationary output is too restrictive. Potential output is seen as sustainable; yet experience...

Do the prevailing unusually and persistently low real interest rates reflect a decline in the natural rate of interest as commonly thought? We argue that this is only part of the story. The critical role of financial factors in influencing medium-term economic fluctuations must also be taken...

We compare and contrast two prominent notions of financial cycles: a domestic variant, which focuses on how financial conditions within individual economies lead to boom-bust cycles there; and a global variant, which highlights how global financial conditions affect individual economies. The two...