BUSINESS CYCLE TRENDS,CYCLES AND GROWTH REVISITED: WITH APPLICATIONS TO G7 ECONOMIES*

This paper examines the behaviour of G7 economies and decomposes their GDP into trend and cycle components using the Kalman filter. The general model of the paper encompasses a number of alternative specifications about trend growth, therefore accommodating diverse views on growth. The business cycle characteristics of G7 economies are then discussed, compared and deliberated in this framework. The empirical results overwhelmingly favor a mean‐reverting stochastic process for the growth rate, the general and unrestricted specification of the paper, across G7 countries, though the restrictions are statistically rejected in less than half of the cases. Further reflection on the properties of cycles makes the specifications and the results of this study more reasonable in capturing the characteristics of GDP series, and contributes to solving the controversies in model specifications in some previous studies.     

Bilateral Tax Treaties and GDP Comovement

Using a 30‐year panel of quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) fluctuations from of a broad set of countries, we demonstrate that the signing of a bilateral tax treaty increases the comovement of treaty partners' business cycles by half a standard deviation. This effect of fiscal policy is as large as the effect of trade linkages on comovement and stronger than the effects of several other common financial and investment linkages. We also show that bilateral tax treaties increase comovement in shocks to nations' GDP trends, demonstrating the permanent effects of coordination on fiscal policy rules. We estimate trend and business cycle components of nations' output series using an unobserved‐components model in order to measure comovement between countries and then estimate the impact of tax treaties using generalized estimating equations.     

Measuring international business cycles by saving for a rainy day

Macroeconomics inevitably begins with a trend‐cycle decomposition of a nation's output. We propose a decomposition in which consumption is the trend component and savings is the cycle component. Using data from the G‐7 plus Australia, we show that this decomposition identifies international business cycles that are: (i) more volatile, (ii) of longer mean duration and (iii) less correlated across countries than the cycle component from the Hodrick‐Prescott filter. We argue that this difference stems from the fact that our method imposes a basic theoretical restriction arising from the permanent income hypothesis similar to the restriction used in Cochrane's ( 1994 ) decomposition.     

The Productivity Slowdown Puzzle. Technological and Non-technological Shocks in the Labor Market

Abstract

In this paper we examine the relationships between business cycles in the G7 countries. We focus on whether recessionary periods in one country are independent of the timing of recessions in other countries in the G7, using three different methods for dating recessions. We find that the evidence is mixed on whether phases of the business cycle in North America and in European countries are independent, or whether there is a common phase structure in the business cycle across all the G7 economies. NBER dates suggest that business cycles are synchronised, while other methods for generating business cycle chronologies are more consistent with regional, rather than international cycles. We also find mixed evidence on whether the UK is synchronised with European countries, while Japan quite clearly has the cycle that is most independent of other G7 countries.     

On PPP,unit roots and panels

In this paper we use a combination of time series unit root and cointegration analysis and the Bai and Ng (Econometrica 72:1127–1187, 2004) factor model approach to assess the purchasing power parity hypothesis for four real exchange rate panels. Our main findings are twofold: First, we find robust evidence for nonstationary common components in the real exchange rate panels and hence no evidence for PPP. Second, the presence of nonstationary common components is consistent with rejections of the unit root null hypothesis when applying a battery of first and second generation panel unit root tests, which are known to be adversely affected in the presence of common nonstationary components.     

On the temporary and permanent components of global construction

This letter applies unobserved components models to decompose global construction series. By examining the temporary and permanent trends in a structural time-series framework, the uninterpretable difficulties inherent in bandpass filters are overcome and the trend–cycle decomposition of the construction series is treated as a special case. Overall global construction mimic patterns in the global economy: falling with recessions and rising with upturns. Understanding the cyclical behaviour of global construction output and its long run trend holds important lessons for smoothing the construction cycle.     

AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS CYCLE FACTS*

This paper documents the post-war business cycle facts for Australia. The Hodrick-Prescott filter is used to remove the trend component from quarterly macroeconomic series. The business cycle facts we report are the volatilities of the cyclical (detrended) series and their cross correlations with cyclical real output. These facts are consistent with the business cycle facts reported for the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand with one exception. For most of the period since 1974, the real wage in Australia is strongly counter-cyclical whereas for these countries it is procyclical.     

Evidence for common features in G7 macroeconomic time series

Systems of economic data potentially exhibit a number of common features, which aid both econometric modelling and economic interpretation. This paper surveys a variety of common features and applies the corresponding testing and estimation techniques to systems of macroeconomic time series in the G7 countries. Strong evidence is found of common trends and common or co-dependent cycles in the data, and, for two countries, empirical support for common non-linearities.     

Questioning the empirical basis of the environmental Kuznets curve for CO2: New evidence from a panel stationarity test robust to multiple breaks and cross-dependence

This paper investigates the time series properties of per capita CO₂ emissions and per capita GDP levels for a sample of 86 countries over the period 1960-2000. For that purpose, we employ a state-of-the-art panel stationarity test which incorporates multiple shifts in level and slope, thereby controlling for cross-sectional dependence through bootstrap methods. Our analysis renders clear-cut evidence that per capita GDP levels are nonstationary for the world as a whole while per capita CO₂ is found to be regime-wise trend stationary. The analysis of country-groups shows that for Africa and Asia, per capita CO₂ is best described as nonstationary, while per capita GDP appears stationary around a broken trend. In addition, we find evidence of regime-wise trend stationarity in both variables for the country-groups consisting of America, Europe and Oceania. The results of our analysis carry important implications for the statistical modelling of the Environmental Kuznets curve for CO₂, since the differing order of integration in both variables for the world as a whole and for Africa and Asia calls into question the validity of panel cointegration techniques which assume that both variables are nonstationary and cointegrated with one another. Cointegration techniques would not be appropriate either for the case of America, Europe and Oceania which are characterised by per capita GDP and CO₂ emissions being stationary around a broken trend. Similar conclusions are reached when we analyse country-groups based on levels of development. Failure to properly characterise the time series properties of the data by not controlling for an unknown number of structural breaks and for cross-sectional dependence could be responsible for the fragility and lack of robustness surrounding the estimation of environmental Kuznets curves.     

A time series analysis of labor productivity. Italy versus the European countries and the U.S.

This paper aims at analyzing labor productivity per hour worked in the manufacturing industries of four industrialized countries, Germany, France, Italy and the U.S., between 1950 and 2010. It uses the common trends - common cycles approach to decompose series into trends and cycles. We find that the four national manufacturing sectors share three common trends and one common cycle. Further, we show that trend and cycle innovations have a negative relationship that supports the ‘opportunity cost’ approach to productivity growth. Finally, trend innovations are generally larger that cycle innovations, with the exception of Italy.     

Are business cycles stationary fluctuations around a deterministic trend? Empirical evidence from 79 developing countries

There is a large literature that tests the univariate time series properties of the real output series following the seminal work of Nelson and Plosser (1982). Whether or not real output is characterized by a unit root process has important implications. A unit root in real output, for instance, is inconsistent with the notion that business cycles are stationary fluctuations around a deterministic trend. In this paper, we investigate the univariate time series properties of real output for 79 developing countries using the conventional augmented Dickey and Fuller (1979) unit root test, the Zivot and Andrews’ (1992) one structural break unit root test, and the Lumsdaine and Papell (1997) two structural breaks unit root test. Our main finding is that, for 40 countries, real output is stationary around a trend. This indicates that business cycles are stationary fluctuations around a deterministic trend for only 51% of the developing countries in our sample.     

A look at jobless recoveries in G7 countries

We study changes in the plucking behavior of employment growth, as well as changes in its relationship with the output cycle in the G7 countries. Using both revised and real-time data, we consider several popular measures of the output cycle. For most countries, we see significant evidence in favor of structural changes in the response coefficients of employment growth to its own gap, suggesting much slower recoveries in labor markets, consistent with the jobless recoveries hypothesis. However, we also find evidence in favor of heterogeneity across countries, both in the responses of employment to employment gaps and in the responses of employment to the output cycle.     

Is there a trade-off between procyclicality and revisions in EC trend TFP estimations?

Potential output constitutes a central measure to determine compliance of the member states with the EU fiscal rules. The EU uses a production function approach to estimate potential output. In a Kalman filter model together with a Bayesian approach TFP is decomposed into a trend and a cycle. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between two widely discussed issues of the EC estimate of potential output, procyclicality and the extent of revisions. Procyclicality of the TFP trend depends on the prior assumptions for the residual variance of the TFP cycle equation. Exploiting this, simulations over increasing values of the priors of the residual variance of the TFP cycle equation are run for eight EU countries, leading to decreasing procyclicality of TFP trend estimates. Procyclicality of the estimated TFP trend reduces the standard error of revisions for half of the countries considered, while it implies an increase for the other countries or has no effect. Thus there is a trade-off between procyclicality of the TFP trend and the revision error, but it is not so clear cut. The standard errors of revisions of real-time estimates of the TFP trend as a criterion of model selection could improve forecasts additionally to the marginal likelihood value employed by the EC.     

Dynamics of Business Cycles in Asia: Differences and Similarities

The paper documents the extent of similarities and differences of business cycle characteristics of the Asian countries and compares the cyclical regularities in this region with those of the G‐7 countries. The Asian economies are generally more volatile than the G‐7 countries, but the amplitude of economic fluctuations in the Asian countries tends to decrease over time. Comovement and persistence properties of business cycles in the Asian countries are very similar to those of the G‐7 economies. The authors find that while the patterns of business cycle fluctuations in the main macroeconomic aggregates display important similarities, the behavior of fiscal and monetary policy variables exhibits significant differences across the Asian countries. Moreover, there is a high degree of comovement between the individual country business cycles and different measures of the Asian business cycle, indicating that there is a regional business cycle specific to the Asian countries.     

Business cycle duration dependence and foreign recessions

This study revisits business cycle duration dependence in G7 countries by controlling for foreign recessions, defined as the number of other G7 countries in a recession. Estimates from regime switching logit models show that the monthly likelihood of ending an expansion roughly doubles for every extra G7 country in recession, but the end of foreign recessions do not affect the ending of recessions. They also show that recessions are duration dependent in all G7 countries, but expansions only in the United States and Germany. The economic importance of foreign recessions and duration in driving business cycle phase changes vary across countries.     

Common Trends and Common Cycles in Per Capita GDP: The Case of the G7 Countries, 1870–2001

In this paper we analyze per capita incomes of the G7 countries using the common cycles test developed by Vahid and Engle (Journal of Applied Econometrics, 8:341–360, 1993) and extended by Hecq et al. (Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 62:511–532, 2000; Econometric Reviews, 21:273–307, 2002) and the common trend test developed by Johansen (Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 12:231–254, 1988). Our main contribution is that we impose the common cycle and common trend restrictions in decomposing the innovations into permanent and transitory components. Our main finding is permanent shocks explain the bulk of the variations in incomes for the G7 countries over short time horizons, and is in sharp contrast to the bulk of the recent literature. We attribute this to the greater forecasting accuracy achieved, which we later confirm through performing a post sample forecasting exercise, from the variance decomposition analysis.

Unit root and trend breaks in per capita output: evidence from sub-Saharan African countries

This article examines the nonstationary properties of per capita real output in 28 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, covering the period 1960–2014. The sequential testing approach proposed by Kejriwal and Lopez (2013, Econometric Reviews 32(8), 892–927) is used to categorize SSA countries into growth shift, level shift and linear trend hypotheses based on the presence or not of breaks in slope and/or level of the trend function. The break dates are associated to major historical or economic events such as sociopolitical crisis, commodity price fluctuations on international market, the discovery and the exploitation of mineral deposits or unfavourable environmental and climatic conditions. The empirical evidences of appropriate unit root tests fail to reject the unit root hypothesis in all the countries, suggesting that a shock would have a permanent effect on growth process, and stabilization policies may be implemented in dealing with income fluctuations.     

Labor market frictions and the international propagation mechanism

The paper studies the role of labor market frictions in accounting for international business cycle comovement. To this aim, we embed labor market search and matching frictions in a two-country New Keynesian model. We show that labor market frictions amplify the international propagation of supply and demand shocks. In terms of cyclical properties then, they raise the cross-country output correlation. Adding labor market search in the New Keynesian model thus improves its ability to account for the business cycle comovement observed in G7 countries in the recent decades. Nominal wage rigidity substantially contributes to this result. Labor market institutions also play a role. Yet, their impact is not unequivocal depending on the institution considered. Business cycle synchronization is thus found to increase with the generosity of the unemployment benefits system, whereas it decreases with the strictness of employment protection.     

Three new empirical perspectives on the Hodrick–Prescott parameter

The purpose of this article is to provide three new empirical perspectives on the validity of the value of the smoothing parameter in the Hodrick–Prescott filter (HP filter): Bayesian smoothness perspective, output gap perspective, and forecasting perspective. The quarterly time series of industrial production and capacity utilization for developed countries are analyzed. The empirical results suggest that (1) from the Bayesian smoothness perspective, the HP filter with 1600 as the value of the smoothing parameter (HP1600 filter) is mostly unable to provide a sufficiently smooth trend component; (2) from the output gap perspective, the HP1600 filter provides a poor cycle component; (3) from the forecasting perspective, the HP1600 filter is most suitable for eight-step or nine-step ahead forecasting.     

International Spillovers of Output Growth and Output Growth Volatility: Evidence from the G7

This paper examines the transmission of GDP growth and GDP growth volatility among the G7 countries over the period 1960Q1 – 2010Q4, using a multivariate GARCH model and volatility impulse response functions (VIRFs) to identify the source, magnitude and the duration of volatility spillovers. Results indicate the presence of positive own-country GDP growth spillovers in each country and cross-country GDP growth spillovers among most of the G7 countries. In addition, the large number of significant own-country output growth volatility spillovers and cross-country output growth volatility spillovers indicates that output growth shocks in most of the G7 countries affect output growth volatility in the other remaining countries. An additional finding is that the duration of output growth volatility spillovers has increased over time from some seven quarters in the 1970s to some ten quarters during the recent crisis, which is likely to be due to the increased integration of goods and financial markets.