We investigate whether business cycle fluctuations affect the degree of excess sensitivity of private consumption growth to disposable income growth. Using multivariate state space methods and quarterly US data for the period 1965-2000 we find that excess sensitivity is significantly higher...

Recessions and expansions are often caused or reinforced by developments in private consumption - the largest component of aggregate demand - which, as a result, varies over the business cycle. As such, an accurate measurement of the cyclical component of consumption and an understanding of its...

"We investigate whether business cycle fluctuations affect the degree of excess sensitivity of private consumption growth to disposable income growth. Using multivariate state space methods and quarterly US data for the period 1965-2000 we find that excess sensitivity is significantly higher...

We investigate the presence of international business cycles in macroeconomic aggregates (output, consumption, investment) using a panel of 60 countries over the period 1961 - 2014. The paper presents a Bayesian stochastic factor selection approach for dynamic factor models with predetermined...

We investigate the cyclicality of the private savings to GDP ratio for a panel of 19 OECD countries over the period 1971-2009. We find robust evidence that the private savings ratio is countercyclical. Three theories unambiguously predict a higher private savings ratio during recessions: a...

This paper uses a large historical dataset (1870-2016) for 16 industrial economies to show that during macroeconomic disasters (e.g., wars, pandemics, depressions) aggregate consumption and income are significantly less decoupled than during normal times. That is, during these times of turmoil,...