Can standard business-cycle methodology be applied to China? In this chapter, we address this question by examining the macroeconomic time series and identifying dimensions in which China differs from economies (such as Canada and the U.S.) that are typically the subject of business-cycle...

Trending current accounts pose a challenge for intertemporal open-economy macro models. This paper shows that a two-country representative-agent business cycle model is able to explain the historical time-paths of the US and Japanese current accounts, both of which display trends but in opposite...

We estimate the age distribution's effect on business cycle fluctuations across a large number of countries. A 10 percentage point increase in the middle-aged share of the population decreases output volatility by 15 percent for the average country

I exploit the variation in demographic change across the United States to estimate the relationship between the age distribution in the population and the magnitude of cyclical output volatility. According to panel regression estimates the relative supply of young workers, or youth share, has a...