Are business cycles all alike? Evidence from long-run international data

Luca Stanca

Applied Economics Letters, 1999, vol. 6, issue 12, 765-769

Abstract: Most recent empirical analyses of aggregate economic fluctuations rely on the implicit assumption that business cycles are all alike. This paper investigates this assumption for the long-run international data set of Backus and Kehoe and presents the results of statistical tests of the 'representative cycle' hypothesis. Findings show that there is substantial heterogeneity across individual cycles and phases in terms of duration, amplitude, and co-movements between variables, and that such heterogeneity is generally statistically significant. These results underline, at an empirical level, the limitations of measuring business cycles in terms of sample second moments, and, at a theoretical level, the difficulties of developing theories providing a unified explanation of the business cycle.

Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article& ... 40C6AD35DC6213A474B5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:6:y:1999:i:12:p:765-769

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/135048599352123

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().