Suchergebnisse

This volume focuses on the analysis and measurement of business cycles in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). Divided into five parts, it begins with an overview of the main concepts and problems involved in monitoring and forecasting business cycles. Then it highlights the role of BRICS in the global economy and explores the interrelatedness of business cycles within BRICS. In turn, part two provides studies on the historical development of business cycles in the individual BRICS countries and describes the driving forces behind those cycles. Parts three and four present national business tendency surveys and composite cyclical indices for real-time monitoring and forecasting of various BRICS economies, while the final part discusses how the lessons learned in the BRICS countries can be used for the analysis of business cycles and their socio-political consequences in other emerging countries.

IN THIS PAPER THE AUTHORS DEMONSTRATE HOW CERTAIN VERY ORDINARY ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES LEAD MAXIMIZING INDIVIDUALS TO CHOOSE CONSUMPTIONPRODUCTION PLANS THAT DISPLAY MANY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS COMMONLY ASSOCIATED WITH BUSINESS CYCLES. OUR EXPLANATION IS ENTIRELY CONSISTENT WITH (I) RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS, (II) COMPLETE CURRENT INFORMATION, (III) STABLE PREFERENCES, (IV) NO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, (V) NO LONG-LIVED COMMODITIES, (VI) NO FRICTIONS OR ADJUSTMENT COSTS, (VII) NO GOVERNMENT, (VIII) NO MONEY, AND (IX) NO SERIAL DEPENDENCE IN THE STOCHASTIC ELEMENTS OF THE ENVIRONMENT. THEY ALSO PROVIDE A COMPLETELY WORKED OUT EXAMPLE OF THE TYPE OF ARTIFICIAL ECONOMY WE HAVE IN MIND. THE TIME-SERIES PROPERTIES OF THE EXAMPLE EXHIBIT SOME MAJOR FEATURES OF OBSERVED BUSINESS CYCLES. ALTHOUGH THIS TYPE OF MODEL MAY NOT BE CAPABLE OF EXPLAINING ALL OF THE REGULARITIES IN ACTUAL BUSINESS CYCLES, THEY BELIEVE THAT IT PROVIDES A USEFUL, WELL-DEFINED BENCHMARK FOR ASSESSING THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF FACTORS (E.G., MONETARY DISTURBANCES) THAT WE HAVE DELIBERATELY IGNORED.

This paper studies a New Keynesian business cycle model with agents who are averse to ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty). Shocks to confidence about future TFP are modeled as changes in ambiguity. To assess the size of those shocks, our estimation uses not only data on standard macro variables, but also incorporates the dispersion of survey forecasts about growth as a measure of confidence. Our main result is that TFP and confidence shocks together can explain roughly two thirds of business cycle frequency movements in the major macro aggregates. Confidence shocks account for about 70 percent of this variation. (JEL D81, D84, E12, E32)

This article evaluates the consistency of the NBER business cycle reference dates. It finds that the early reference dates are derived from detrended data, whereas the dates after 1927 are derived from data in levels. To evaluate the importance of this and other changes in technique, I derive a simple algorithm that matches the postwar NBER peaks and troughs closely. When this algorithm is applied to data for 1884 to 1940, the new prewar dates differ systematically from the NBER dates and challenge the conventional view that recessions have gotten shorter over time.

We propose a new strategy for dissecting the macroeconomic time series, provide a template for the business-cycle propagation mechanism that best describes the data, and use its properties to appraise models of both the parsimonious and the medium-scale variety. Our findings support the existence of a main business-cycle driver but rule out the following candidates for this role: technology or other shocks that map to TFP movements; news about future productivity; and inflationary demand shocks of the textbook type. Models aimed at accommodating demand-driven cycles without a strict reliance on nominal rigidity appear promising. (JEL C22, E10, E32)

Strong institutional constraints and better-informed voters may lead re-election seeking incumbents to shift the use of political business cycle mechanisms away from monetary and fiscal policy towards other policy domains that are more easily manipulable, targetable, and timeable. We investigate teacher employment patterns at the state level in Germany and find strong evidence of cycling mechanisms, in the form of electioneering and honeymooning. Against a backdrop of a continuously shrinking total teachers' pool, German state-level incumbents accelerate the hiring of new teachers during election periods and partly reverse this during politically safer points in the electoral cycle. Cycles are mediated by issue salience: heightened attention to German public schooling after the notorious PISA-2000 tests further strengthens the manipulation of new teacher hiring for electoral purposes. Adapted from the source document.