The political budget cycle (PBC) literature argues that governments expand deficits in election years. However, what happens when an economic downturn is expected? Will the government allow the deficit to expand even further, or will it resort to spending cuts and tax increases? When voters...

This paper presents a coincident and a leading composite monthly indicator for the world business cycle - the Global Economic Barometers. Both target the world’s output growth rate cycle. The calculation of these indicators comprises two main stages. The first consists of a variable selection...

Recent literature suggests that news shocks could be an important driver of economic cycles. In this article, we use a direct measure of news sentiment derived from media reports. This allows us to examine whether innovations in the reporting tone correlate with changes in the assessment and...

This paper presents a composite leading indicator for the Swiss business cycle corresponding to the growth rate cycle concept. It is the result of a complete overhaul of the KOF Economic Barometer that has been published by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute on a monthly basis since 1976. In line...

This paper tests the existence of strategic information complementarities as a source of sectoral comovement. A theoretical model derived in Veldkamp and Wolfers (2007) explains sectoral comovement by the assumption that firms rely too much on aggregate information to make output decisions. We...

This paper presents a composite leading indicator for the Swiss business cycle corresponding to the growth rate cycle concept. It is the result of a complete overhaul of the KOF Economic Barometer that has been published by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute on a monthly basis since 1976. In line...

Seit dem Winter hat sich das Sars-Cov-2-Virus überall in der Welt verbreitet. Die Regionen sind zwar unterschiedlich betroffen, aber es gibt kaum ein Land ohne Covid-19-Erkrankungen. Wegen des intensiven weltweiten Austauschs von Personen und Waren sowie der Nähe zu Italien, war die Schweiz...

Die COVID-19-Pandemie führt weltweit zu einem starken Konjunktureinbruch. Die vom Bundesrat Mitte März verordneten Massnahmen zur Eindämmung der Ansteckungen mit dem Sars-Cov-2-Virus haben die wirtschaftliche Aktivität in der Schweiz weiter eingeschränkt. Inzwischen ist die Ansteckungsrate...