Historical Evidence on Business Cycles: The International Experience

Abstract

This paper adopts a historical perspective to examine the characteristics of business cycle fluctuations within and across a large set of countries. Following the classical work by Burns and Mitchell (1946), we define business cycles as recurrent, but not necessarily periodic, fluctuations in economic activities with a duration of two to eight years. According to them, business cycles are characterized by their average duration and amplitude and the co-movement of economic activities. Our objective is to document regularities of these cyclical movements both across countries and across time. Most recent empirical work within this strand of research has dealt with the American record; see, for example, Lucas (1977), Kydland and Prescott (1990), and Stock and Watson (1998). A number of recent studies have made international comparisons of business cycles, among others