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We estimate trend UK labour productivity growth using a Hodrick-Prescott filter method. We use the results to compare downturns where the economy fell below its pre-existing trend. We find that the current productivity slowdown has resulted in productivity being 19.7 per cent below the pre-2008 trend path in 2018. This is nearly double the previous worst productivity shortfall ten years after the start of a downturn. On this criterion the slowdown is unprecedented in the past 250 years. We conjecture that this reflects a combination of adverse circumstances, namely, a financial crisis, a weakening impact of ICT and impending Brexit.

We analyse TFP growth in the US business sector using a basic unobserved component model where trend growth follows a random walk and the noise is a first order autoregression. This is fitted using a Kalman-filter methodology. We find that trend TFP growth has declined steadily from 1.5 to 1.0 per cent per year over the past 50 years. Nevertheless, recent trends are not a good guide to actual medium-term TFP growth. This exhibits substantial variations and is quite unpredictable. Techno-optimists should not give best to productivity pessimists simply because recent TFP growth has been weak.

In an almost unreferenced article, Fitzhugh Carmichael (1928), writing of the period around the First World War, noted that "during the past twelve years many economic series have undergone what appears to be a permanent change in level." These are prescient words that are widely applicable today. Carmichael noted that the then-standard practice of linear detrending was inappropriate in the presence of what we would now call "structural breaks"; as a result he proposed a method that would not only model a nonlinear trend, but would be suitable for situations where the transition from one regime to another was smooth. This study establishes the precedence of Carmichael's ideas, re-examines his methods, and solves the problems that he thought would hinder wider applications of his approach, which has since become a central part of contemporary nonlinear econometric methods and for which Carmichael should be given credit.

We report estimates of the fiscal multiplier for interwar Britain based on quarterly data, time-series econometrics, and "defense news." We find that the government expenditure multiplier was in the range 0.3 to 0.8, much lower than previous estimates. The scope for a Keynesian solution to recession was less than is generally supposed. We find that rearmament gave a smaller boost to real GDP than previously claimed. Rearmament may, however, have had a larger impact than a temporary public works program of similar magnitude if private investment anticipated the need to add capacity to cope with future defense spending.

We report estimates of the fiscal multiplier for interwar Britain based on quarterly data, time-series econometrics, and 'defense news'. We find that the government expenditure multiplier was in the range 0.5 to 0.8, much lower than previous estimates. The scope for a Keynesian solution to recession was much lower than is generally supposed. We do find that rearmament gave a substantial boost to real GDP after 1935 but this was because the private sector responded to news of massive future defense spending and does not imply that the multiplier effect of temporary public works programs would have been large.

This paper examines the time series properties of real GDP in the Euro area (EU 11), both prior to and after the adoption of the Euro in January 1999. We employ the relatively recent "optimal approximation" band pass filter developed by Christiano and Fitzgerald (2003) in order to identify a Euro-zone business cycle. We also utilise two alternative assumptions regarding the behaviour of the trend component of Euro area real GDP. The empirical results suggest that the single currency experiment appears to have reduced trend growth in the Euro zone, both ex-ante during the Maastricht nominal convergence phase, and also ex-post, during the period 2001Q1 to 2005Q4. With respect to cyclical behaviour, we identify a very robust measure of the Euro zone business cycle in the post 1994 period which does not appear to be sensitive to the particular assumption made regarding the trend rate of growth of real GDP. This type of result should facilitate a more accurate assessment of the extent to which individual countries and groups of countries are converged with respect to the Euro area business cycle.

AbstractIn this paper we consider an extension of Hamilton's Markov chain model of output growth that allows for a one‐time structural break in the hyperparameters. We fit this model to post‐war quarterly output growth data from the G‐7 economies and find evidence for such a structural break in each of them, although the break occurs at different times. The break is always associated with a decline in volatility and often with a narrowing of the mean growth differential between the expansionary and recessionary regimes. The results show that stabilisation has typically been achieved at the expense of a reduction in growth rates.

We estimate a model that incorporates two key features of business cycles, comovement among economic variables and switching between regimes of boom and slump, to quarterly UK data for the last four decades. A common factor, interpreted as a composite indicator of coincident variables, and estimates of turning points from one regime to the other, are extracted from the data by using the Kalman filter and maximum likelihood estimation. Both comovement and regime switching are found to be important features of the UK business cycle. The composite indicator produces a sensible representation of the cycle and the estimated turning points agree fairly well with independently determined chronologies. These estimates are sharper than those produced by a univariate Markov switching model of GDP alone. A fairly typical stylized fact of business cycles is confirmed by this model – recessions are steeper and shorter than recoveries.