SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance
No 255:
Historical Evidence on Business Cycles: The International Experience
U. Michael Bergman ()
, Michael D. Bordo ()
and Lars Jonung ()
Abstract: This paper examines the characteristics of business cycles
within and across thirteen countries for more than a century of
observations adopting a monetary regime perspective. We search for
empirical regularities of business cycle fluctuations during three monetary
regimes; the classical gold standard, the interwar period and the
post-World War II period. Our empirical results, based on bandpass filtered
data, suggest that business cycle fluctuations have remained surprisingly
stable across monetary regimes and across countries. In particular, the
procyclical pattern for consumption, investment, exports and imports is
stable across regimes and countries. We find a rise in the frequency of
significant cyclical comovements across countries, possibly reflecting a
recent rise in economic integration. Our evidence suggests that both the
amplitude and the symmetry of business cycles have changed over time. The
post-World War II period is marginally less volatile than the gold standard
period while the interwar period is more volatile.
Keywords: Business cycles; monetary regimes; amplitude; symmetry and comovement of cycles; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: E32; (follow links to similar papers)
41 pages, September 3, 1998
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- This paper is published as:
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Bergman, U. Michael, Michael D. Bordo and Lars Jonung, (1998), 'Historical Evidence on Business Cycles: The International Experience' in Fuhrer, Jeffrey C. and Scott Schuh (eds.) Beyond Shocks: What Causes Business Cycles?, Conference Series No. 42, pages 65-113, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
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