Showing 1 – 24 of 24 results.
Self-published
The Aftermath of Sovereign Debt Crises: A Narrative Approach (ICPSR 300891)
Released/updated on: 2026-04-21
Time period: 1870-01-01--2010-01-01
This paper investigates the causal effects of sovereign debt crises in a sample of 50 defaulting economies between 1870 and 2010. As default is potentially endogenous, we use the narrative approach to identify plausibly exogenous episodes. We find economically and statistically significant costs of up to 3.2 percent of GDP before recovering to the pre-crisis level after five years. The average aftermath, however, conceals a large heterogeneity by default cause. Defaults originating from negative supply shocks, political crises, or adverse terms of trade are associated with higher costs. Demand shocks, in contrast, have a moderate effect that is quickly reversed.
Curated
Budget Balances (Deficits and Surpluses) for 54 Middle Income Countries From 1976-2007 (ICPSR 29341)
Released/updated on: 2010-09-27
Geographic coverage: South America, Central America, Asia, Africa, Global
Time period: 1976-01-01--2007-01-01
This study examines whether opportunistic and partisan business cycles influence fiscal policy in 54 developing countries when controlling for de facto exchange rate regimes and capital mobility. With most exchange rate regimes, leftist parties are more likely to engage in expansionary fiscal policy, but are less likely to do so as capital mobility rises. With a rigidly fixed rate, however, leftist parties engage in more fiscal expansion with higher capital mobility. Unless an exchange rate is freely falling, an election is more likely to encourage fiscal expansion when capital mobility is high.
Curated
Business Cycle and Chain-Weighted GDP: Has Our Perspective Changed? (ICPSR 1178)
Released/updated on: 1998-10-06
Geographic coverage: United States
Our perspective on the United States economy's recent performance has been challenged recently by changes in the methodology used to adjust the National Income and Product Accounts for inflation. This research surveys the changes embodied in the revised data, examining the question of whether the revisions alter the view of the overall pattern of economic fluctuations known collectively as the business cycle.
Curated
Changes in Inventory Management and the Business Cycle (ICPSR 1164)
Released/updated on: 1998-08-27
Geographic coverage: United States
The data examine whether changes in the methods of inventory management will have a major impact on the amplitude or duration of the business cycle.
Self-published
ECIN Replication Package for "Consumer Confidence and Household Investment" (ICPSR 209796)
Released/updated on: 2025-09-18
Replication files for Consumer Confidence and Household Investment. Can consumer confidence account for the leading indicator property of household investment over the US business cycle? We find that it does. Consumer confidence leads household investment and housing starts by two and one quarter, respectively. Household investment increases in a persistent manner after a positive confidence shock, and so do total hours worked, output, and real house prices. Quantitatively, confidence shocks account for a substantial share of the forecast error variation in these variables. They are also unrelated to future supply-side fundamentals. Demand-side forces originating in consumers' social and psychological factors are, therefore, relevant for household investment dynamics.
Self-published
ECIN Replication Package for "Dutch Disease, Unemployment and Structural Change" (ICPSR 244427)
Released/updated on: 2026-03-10
We find that Dutch Disease effects on unemployment are small even in a commodity-rich economy like Australia. Using an estimated open-economy model with frictional unemployment, we quantify how business-cycle shocks and structural changes shape aggregate unemployment. A permanent rise in commodity prices in the 2000s appreciated the real exchange rate and temporarily increased unemployment, but its effect was offset by a gradual, secular decline in the disutility of work in the non-tradable sector, a key driver of long-run structural change. Shifting preferences toward non-tradables, together with non-commodity shocks, account for most of the observed unemployment dynamics.
Self-published
ECIN Replication Package for "Trade, Offshoring, and Manufacturing Employment Volatility in Mexico" (ICPSR 228441)
Released/updated on: 2025-08-16
Geographic coverage: Mexico
Time period: 2007-01-01--2020-12-31
We find that manufacturing sectors specializing in the processing and assembly of foreign-owned intermediate goods had higher employment volatility in Mexico from 2007 to 2020, whereas specialization in trade had limited impacts on volatility. In general, the co-evolution of trade integration and international outsourcing complicates efforts to disentangle the distinct effects of trade versus offshoring on developing-country labor markets. We approach that problem by using official statistics that distinguish between production sharing processes typical of offshoring-intensive sectors versus traditional trade activities. The empirical strategy exploits regional and temporal variation within industries using data supplied for this project.
Curated
Eighty Years of Observations on the Adjusted Monetary Base: 1918-1997 (ICPSR 1199)
Released/updated on: 1999-06-23
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1918-01-01--1997-01-01
Recent trends in empirical macroeconomic research embedding long-run relationships between seasonal cycles and business cycles and building endogenous growth models, along with the interest of policymakers in inflation targeting, have increased the importance of long-time series of macroeconomic data. Among the more important time series are quantitative measures of monetary policy, such as the adjusted monetary base. Previously published data for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis adjusted monetary base begin in 1935 (seasonally unadjusted), and in 1950 (seasonally adjusted). In this analysis, the authors develop a consistent time series for the adjusted monetary base that begins in 1918, shortly after the founding of the Federal Reserve System.
Curated
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) Consensus Forecasts (ICPSR 22683)
Released/updated on: 2008-06-10
Geographic coverage: United States
In November 2007, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced a change in the way it communicates its view of the economic outlook: It increased the frequency of its forecasts from two to four times per year, and it increased the length of the forecasting horizon from two to three years. The FOMC does not release the individual members' forecasts or standard measures of consensus such as the mean or median. Rather, it continues to release the forecast information as a range of forecasts, both the full range between the high and the low and a central tendency that omits the extreme values. This paper uses individual forecaster data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) to mimic the FOMC's method for creating their central tendency. The authors show that the midpoint of the central tendency of the SPF is a reliable measure of the consensus, suggesting that the FOMC reporting method is also a reliable measure of consensus. For the dates when both are available, the authors also compare the relative forecast accuracy of the FOMC and SPF consensus forecasts for output growth and inflation. Overall, the differences in forecast accuracy are too small to be statistically significant.
Curated
Firm Volatility and Credit: A Macroeconomic Analysis (ICPSR 25062)
Released/updated on: 2009-03-11
Geographic coverage: United States
This paper examines a tractable real business cycle model with idiosyncratic productivity shocks and binding credit constraints on entrepreneurs. The model shows how firm volatility increases in combination with credit market development. It further generates the observed co-movement of credit and firm volatility with output at business cycle frequencies in response to aggregate
productivity shocks.
Curated
Forecasting Inflation and Output: Comparing Data-Rich Models with Simple Rules (ICPSR 22684)
Released/updated on: 2008-06-10
Geographic coverage: United States
There has been a resurgence of interest in dynamic factor models for use by policy advisors. Dynamic factor methods can be used to incorporate a wide range of economic information when forecasting or measuring economic shocks. This article introduces dynamic factor models that underlie the data-rich methods and also tests whether the data-rich models can help a benchmark autoregressive model forecast alternative measures of inflation and real economic activity at horizons of 3, 12, and 24 months ahead. The authors find that, over the past decade, the data-rich models significantly improve the forecasts for a variety of real output and inflation indicators. For all the series that they examine, the authors find that the data-rich models become more useful when forecasting over longer horizons. The exception is the unemployment rate, where the principal components provide significant forecasting information at all horizons.
Curated
Granger Causality and Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory (ICPSR 1345)
Released/updated on: 2007-05-16
Geographic coverage: United States
Postwar United States data show that consumption growth 'Granger-causes' output and investment growth, which is puzzling if technology is the driving force of the business cycle. The author asks whether general equilibrium models with information frictions and non-technology shocks can rationalize the observed causal relationships. His conclusion is they cannot.
Curated
Identifying Business Cycle Turning Points in Real Time (ICPSR 1284)
Released/updated on: 2003-06-25
Geographic coverage: United States
This paper evaluates the ability of a statistical regime-switching model to identify turning points in United States economic activity in real time. The authors work with a Markov-switching model fit to real Gross Domestic Product and employment data that, when estimated on the entire postwar sample, provides a chronology of business cycle peak and trough dates close to that produced by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Next, they investigate how accurately and quickly the model would have identified NBER-dated turning points had it been used in real time for the past 40 years. In general, the model identifies turning point dates in real time that are close to the NBER dates. For both business cycle peaks and troughs, the model provides systematic improvement over the NBER in the speed at which turning points are identified. Importantly, the model achieves this with few instances of "false positives." Overall, the evidence suggests that the regime-switching model could be a useful supplement to the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee for establishing turning point dates.
Curated
International Cycles (ICPSR 1116)
Released/updated on: 1996-06-10
Geographic coverage: Global
Twenty years of monthly production data for 11 manufacturing industries in 19 countries are studied. Using the fact that in some countries production virtually shuts down for one summer month, together with the differences in the timing of aggregate cyclical fluctuations, information is provided on the cost structure of different industries. A number of previously documented patterns can be confirmed. In particular, a tremendous amount of volatility in production is accounted for by seasonal shifts, but the seasonal shifts are not very highly correlated across countries. There are also considerable differences in the timing and magnitude of business cycles across countries. Lastly, the country-level differences in seasonality are larger that the industry-level patterns in seasonality. In addition to these basic observations, a number of new results describing how seasonal production patterns vary over the course of the business cycle are provided. With the exception of textiles, and to a lesser extent transportation equipment and chemicals, the seasonal cycle in production is significantly less volatile during a business cycle boom than it is during a business cycle contraction. For one-third of the 19 countries in our sample, there are significant cyclical/seasonal interactions common to all industries within the country. In relative terms, the estimated interactions that are common to countries are larger than the interactions that are common to industries. This is in line with the finding that the overall variation in production differs more across countries that it does across industries. Finally, the reallocation of production from high output months to low output months that typically occurs in moving from a business cycle through to peak is sometimes quite large.
Curated
Macroeconomic Time Series for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France (ICPSR 7644)
Released/updated on: 2007-03-26
Geographic coverage: United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Global
Time period: 1785-01-01--1968-01-01
This collection contains an array of economic time series data pertaining to the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, primarily between the 1920s and the 1960s, and including some time series from the 18th and 19th centuries. These data were collected by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and they constitute a research resource of importance to economists as well as to political scientists, sociologists, and historians. Under a grant from the National Science Foundation, ICPSR and the National Bureau of Economic Research converted this collection (which existed heretofore only on handwritten sheets stored in New York) into fully accessible, readily usable, and completely documented machine-readable form. The NBER collection -- containing an estimated 1.6 million entries -- is divided into 16 major categories: (1) construction, (2) prices, (3) security markets, (4) foreign trade, (5) income and employment, (6) financial status of business, (7) volume of transactions, (8) government finance, (9) distribution of commodities, (10) savings and investments, (11) transportation and public utilities, (12) stocks of commodities, (13) interest rates, and (14) indices of leading, coincident, and lagging indicators, (15) money and banking, and (16) production of commodities. Data from all categories are available in Parts 1-22. The economic variables are usually observations on the entire nation or large subsets of the nation. Frequently, however, and especially in the United States, separate regional and metropolitan data are included in other variables. This makes cross-sectional analysis possible in many cases. The time span of variables in these files may be as short as one year or as long as 160 years. Most data pertain to the first half of the 20th century. Many series, however, extend into the 19th century, and a few reach into the 18th. The oldest series, covering brick production in England and Wales, begins in 1785, and the most recent United States data extend to 1968. The unit of analysis is an interval of time -- a year, a quarter, or a month. The bulk of observations are monthly, and most series of monthly data contain annual values or totals.
Curated
Nominal Facts and the October 1979 Policy Change (ICPSR 1233)
Released/updated on: 2001-04-02
Geographic coverage: United States
Researchers depend on observed regularities in macroeconomic data to guide the development of theory. One problem in developing monetary models of the business cycle is that there seems to be a great deal of instability in nominal data. Using data from 1959:Q1 to 1998:Q4, the authors document changes in the cyclical behavior of nominal data series that appear after 1979:Q3, when the Federal Reserve implemented a policy to end the acceleration of inflation. Such changes in cyclical behavior were not apparent in real variables. The authors conclude that in order to find regularities in nominal datasets, it may be necessary to examine and compare episodes with similar monetary policy regimes.
Curated
Nominal Stylized Facts of United States Business Cycles (ICPSR 1163)
Released/updated on: 1998-08-27
Geographic coverage: United States
The data reexamine the cyclical behavior of money and prices using monthly United States data.
Curated
Outsider's Guide to Real Business Cycle Modeling (ICPSR 1146)
Released/updated on: 1998-08-27
The data collection focuses on real business cycle (RBC) methods that have found application in a wide spectrum of questions in business cycles, monetary economics, open economy macroeconomics, and finance.
Curated
Political Business Cycles in Open Economies in 28 Developing Countries From Latin America, Asia, and Africa, 1976-2002 (ICPSR 27581)
Released/updated on: 2010-10-06
Geographic coverage: Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, Thailand, Bolivia, Global, Costa Rica, Latin America, South Korea, Pakistan, El Salvador, Mali, Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Lesotho, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Philippines, Africa, Mauritius, India, Venezuela, Turkey, Nicaragua, Asia, Botswana, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Mexico, Honduras
Time period: 1976-01-01--2002-01-01
This study looked at whether opportunistic and partisan business cycles influence fiscal policy in 28 developing countries when controlling for de facto exchange rate regimes and capital mobility. Several issues were investigated: 1) opportunistic business cycles, whether elections cause the governments budget balance (taxes minus spending) to experience fiscal expansion (lower taxes and higher spending) in order to stimulate the economy; 2) partisan business cycles, whether left-wing parties engage in more fiscal expansion; 3) whether growing capital mobility (the ability of financial capital to move across borders) will encourage or inhibit a government's ability to engage in fiscal expansion with an impending election or left-wing party; and 4) whether the exchange rate regime (the rules for determining the exchange rate) is a mitigating factor.
Curated
Rational Expectations Business Cycles in Search Equilibrium (ICPSR 1060)
Released/updated on: 1996-01-03
These data and/or computer programs are part of ICPSR's Publication-Related Archive and are distributed exactly as they arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the INVESTIGATOR(S) if further information is desired.
Self-published
Replication Files for "The Impact of Business Cycle Conditions on Firm Dynamics and Composition" (ICPSR 184982)
Released/updated on: 2023-02-16
Geographic coverage: Egypt
Time period: 1911-01-01--1949-01-01
This is the replication package for "The Impact of Business Cycle Conditions on Firm Dynamics and Composition," which investigates firm entry/exit dynamics and heterogeneity over the business cycle. The replication package includes code and data to replicate the industry-location level and firm-level results found in the paper and its appendix.
Curated
United States Business and Jobs: Structure and Changes by Sector and County, 1976-1988 (ICPSR 4471)
Released/updated on: 2006-09-27
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1976-01-01--1988-01-01
The purpose of this study was to provide a description of both the current status and the changes in businesses and jobs in all United States counties, by 75 two-digit industry sectors. The study was designed to inquire to what extent new firm formation and small firm expansion reflect or cause economic growth. The data, originally assembled by Dun and Bradstreet, was edited and processed to adjust for errors and omissions to create a complete census of all business firms (single-site and multiple-site) and associated employment in six two-year periods: 1976-1978, 1978-1980, 1980-1982, 1982-1984, 1984-1986, and 1986-1988. The datasets contain detailed data for the years 1976-1988 on establishment births (new units entering the file), establishment deaths (existing units disappearing), expansion and contraction of all private-sector business establishments, and on the number of business jobs affected by these changes. Each record consists of a number of variables that (1) identify the county and industry, (2) describe the firms and jobs at the beginning of the two-year period, (3) provide descriptions at the end of the two-year period, and (4) that provide data on sources of changes during the two-year period. As the data are designed to be a complete census of all business units and all jobs, it can be aggregated to provide complete counts for any industry, region, or state or for the entire country.
Curated
U.S. Regional Business Cycles and the Natural Rate of Unemployment (ICPSR 1296)
Released/updated on: 2004-08-12
Geographic coverage: United States
Estimates of the natural rate of unemployment are important in many macroeconomic models used by economists and policy advisors. This paper shows how such estimates might benefit from closer attention to regional developments. Regional business cycles do not move in lock-step, and greater dispersion among regions can affect estimates of the natural rate of unemployment. There is microeconomic evidence that employers are more reluctant to cut wages than they are to raise them. Accordingly, the relationship between wage inflation and vacancies is convex: An increase in vacancies raises wage inflation at an increasing rate. The authors' empirical results are consistent with this and indicate that if all else had remained constant, the reduction in the dispersion of regional unemployment rates between 1982 and 2000 would have meant a two-percentage-point drop in the natural rate of aggregate unemployment.
Curated
Weekly Production Scheduling at Assembly Plants in the United States Automobile Industry: 1972-1983 and 1990-2001 (ICPSR 23542)
Released/updated on: 2009-05-29
Geographic coverage: Canada, United States
Time period: 1972-01-01--1983-01-01, 1990-01-01--2001-01-01
This study analyzes weekly data at United States and Canadian automobile assembly plants in order to understand the short-run dynamics of manufacturing production, particularly with regard to business cycles. Although the automobile industry accounts for a small fraction of aggregate employment, it continues to account for a noticeable fraction of business cycle volatility. Hence, studies of this industry are very useful for understanding business cycles.
The data consist of information on weekly operations at United States and Canadian automobile assembly plants owned by the Detroit Three automakers (Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors). The dataset was constructed from industry trade publications that report production schedules at these assembly plants on a weekly basis over the two time periods: 1972-1983, and 1990-2001. The period 1984 to 1989 was excluded only because the authors did not have access to key publications at the time the data were collected. Certain heavy-truck and specialty vehicle facilities were excluded, such as the AMC General military vehicle plant, and GMAD Truck and Coach in Pontiac, MI, which primarily produces buses.
The dataset was collected mainly by reading the weekly production articles in Automotive News, which list the names of assembly plants that are closed each week because of union holidays, inventory adjustments, supply disruptions, and model changeovers. The articles also report which plants are working overtime hours each week. Observations on the line speed posted on each assembly line and the number of shifts working at each plant were collected from Wards Automotive Yearbook and Automotive News.
Unfortunately, the data do not include information on actual production and sales. Production and sales data are reported by model. It is very difficult to match up production and sales data to more than a few plants because most plants produce several models and most models are produced at several plants. Moreover, sales are not reported weekly.