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 book contributes to re cent developments on the statistical analysis of multiple time series in the presence of regime shifts. Markov-switching models have become popular for modelling non-linearities and regime shifts, mainly, in univariate eco nomic time series. This study is intended to provide a systematic and operational ap proach to the econometric modelling of dynamic systems subject to shifts in regime, based on the Markov-switching vector autoregressive model. The study presents a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical properties of Markov-switching vector autoregressive processes and the related statistical methods. The statistical concepts are illustrated with applications to empirical business cyde research. This monograph is a revised version of my dissertation which has been accepted by the Economics Department of the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 1996. It con sists mainly of unpublished material which has been presented during the last years at conferences and in seminars. The major parts of this study were written while I was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschajt (DFG), Berliner Graduier tenkolleg Angewandte Mikroökonomik and Sondeiforschungsbereich 373 at the Free University and Humboldt-University of Berlin. Work was finally completed in the project The Econometrics of Macroeconomic Forecasting founded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) at the Institute of Economies and Statistics, University of Oxford. It is a pleasure to record my thanks to these institutions for their support of my research embodied in this study.

In March 1998 the European Union formally launched the accession process that will lead to a significant enlargement of the Union. So far ten countries from Central Europe: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia have submitted their applications for EU membership. This unique process immediately attracted attention of economists and policy makers. Nevertheless, it can be noticed that among numerous results already published, there is a distinctive shortage of books and papers in which quantitative research methods are applied. This is to a large extent justified by the fact that the transition and accession processes are new to the economic sciences, their methodology is not wellresearched, statistical data for the Central and East European countries are scarce and not always reliable and, generally, quantitative approach seems to be a risky and uncertain business. All these all problems can also be seen as a challenge rather than an obstacle. With this on mind, we have decided to clarify the status quo by organising a research seminar which focused on the methodology and quantitative analysis of the Central and East European transition and pre-accession processes. The seminar, East European Transition and EU Enlargement: a Quantitative Approach organised by Macroeconomic and Financial Data Centre (University of Gdansk and University ofLeicester) took place in Gdansk in June 2001. Our edited volume contains papers developed from this seminar.