The objective of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of using a Markov switching model to measure the synchronization of business cycles. We use a Bayesian, Gibbs sampling approach to estimate a multivariate Markov switching model of GDP growth for several countries. We look for evidence...

We study the effects of growth volatility and inflation volatility on average rates of output growth and inflation for post-war US data. Our results suggest that increased growth uncertainty is associated with significantly lower average growth, while higher inflation uncertainty is...