Measuring Business Cycles: A Review

Abstract

This article summarizes the main findings on problems related to the measurement and identification of business cycles. The aim of this study is to define and identify the determinants of business cycles. This paper provides an overview of the methodology and its future course. Our investigation suggests that some methodological frameworks are available in the literature, but none is perfect. A new development in the field lies in spectral analysis methods for measuring business cycles, which may have advantages over existing methodologies (nonlinearity, stationarity issues). We feel that fractional integration is important in the proper monitoring and explanation of business cycles. Spectral analysis techniques have also proved to be useful for addressing the problems of stationarity and structural breaks in time series when analyzing business cycles. Another important issue that is excluded when studying business cycles is that the link between cycles and economic growth is presumed to be non-existent, implying money neutrality.