We study the filter in Ma and Tang (2012) and show that the filter has predictive power for sunspot cycles. The filter is a 12-month simple moving average of the sum of one month, three month and six month differences of the logarithm monthly sunspot number series. We show that this filter leads...

A new FIR filter is designed to date U.S. recessions with the unemployment rate and the Conference Board employment trend index. Our approach is simple but one can see from the curve the dynamic process how the economy moves from one business cycle to the next. We also present a new use of the...

Robert Barsky and Jeffrey Miron (1989) revealed the seasonal cycle of the U.S. economy from 1948 to 1985 was characterized by a "bubble-like" expansion in the second and fourth quarters, a "crash-like" contraction in the first quarter, and a mild contraction in the third quarter. We replicate,...

Recent work finds evidence that the volatility of the U.S. economy fell dramatically around the first quarter of 1984. We trace the timing of this so-called "Great Moderation" across many subsectors of the economy in order to better understand its root cause. We find that the interest rate...