Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.

This introduction to modern business cycle theory uses a neoclassical growth framework to study the economic fluctuations associated with the business cycle. Presenting advances in dynamic economic theory and computational methods, it applies concepts to t

Previous work by Dumas and Solnik (1993) has shown that a CAPM which incorporates foreign-exchange risk premia (a so-called 'international CAPM') is better capable empirically of explaining the structure of worldwide rates of return than does the classic CAPM. In the specification of that test, moments of rates of return were allowed to vary over time in relation to a number of lagged 'instrumental variables'. Dumas and Solnik used instrumental variables which were endogenous or 'internal' to the financial market (lagged world market portfolio rate of return, dividend yield, bond yield, short-term rate of interest). In the present paper, I use as instruments economic variables which are 'external' to the financial market, such as leading indicators of the business cycles. This is an attempt to explain the behavior of the international stock market on the basis of economically meaningful variables which capture 'the state of the economy'. I find that the leading indicators put together by Stock and Watson (NBER working paper no. 4014, 1992) as predictors of the U.S. business cycle also predict stock returns in the U.S., Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. These instruments lead again to a rejection of the classic CAPM and no rejection of the international CAPM.

This volume presents the most complete collection available of the work of Victor Zarnowitz, a leader in the study of business cycles, growth, inflation, and forecasting.. With characteristic insight, Zarnowitz examines theories of the business cycle, including Keynesian and monetary theories and more recent rational expectation and real business cycle theories. He also measures trends and cycles in economic activity; evaluates the performance of leading indicators and their composite measures; surveys forecasting tools and performance of business and academic economists; discusses historical changes in the nature and sources of business cycles; and analyzes how successfully forecasting firms and economists predict such key economic variables as interest rates and inflation.

Our answer: Not so well. We reached that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the strong positive comovement between output and labor input measures.

A critical examination of The prevailing orthodoxy according to which all macroeconomic theory should be reducible to microeconomics. The book provides a mathematical extension of the Lucas theory to allow for the effects of creation of knowledge upon economic development so as to improve the prediction of business cycle data.