Duration of Business Cycles

Everts, Martin (2006): Duration of Business Cycles.

Abstract

In this paper the Bry and Boschan (1971) procedure is modified such that it can be applied to quarterly data in order to recalculate the maximum duration of business cycles. In this way it can be shown that the maximum duration of business cycles constitutes 42 quarters in the United States of America and 49 quarters in the United Kingdom. The large difference to the maximum duration of Burns and Mitchell (1946) makes clear that caution is advisable with the application of the filters by Baxter and King (1999) and Christiano and Fitzgerald (2003). If one chooses the maximum duration too low (high), the amplitude of the medium-term business cycles is underestimated (overestimated) and the variability of the growth rate of the long-term trend is overestimated (underestimated).

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Institution: University of Bern
• Language: English
• Keywords: Duration; Business Cycles; Dating Turning Points; Non-Parametric Procedure; Minimum Duration; Maximum Duration; Band-Pass Filter
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles > E32 - Business Fluctuations ; Cycles; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles > E37 - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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