IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v51y2019i22p2355-2376.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are linear models really unuseful to describe business cycle data?

Author

Listed:
  • Artur Silva Lopes
  • Gabriel Florin Zsurkis

Abstract

We use first differenced logged quarterly series for the GDP of 29 countries and the euro area to assess the need to use non-linear models to describe business cycle dynamic behaviour. Our approach is model (estimation)-free, based on testing only. We aim to maximize power to detect non-linearities while, simultaneously, avoiding the pitfalls of data mining. The evidence we find does not support some descriptions because the presence of significant non-linearities is observed for two-thirds of the countries only. Linear models cannot be simply dismissed as they are frequently useful. Contrarily to common knowledge, non-linear business cycle variation does not seem to be a universal, undisputable and clearly dominant stylized fact. This finding is particularly surprising for the U.S. case. Some support for non-linear dynamics for some further countries is obtained indirectly, through unit root tests, but this can hardly be invoked to support non-linearity in classical business cycles.

Suggested Citation

  • Artur Silva Lopes & Gabriel Florin Zsurkis, 2019. "Are linear models really unuseful to describe business cycle data?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(22), pages 2355-2376, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:22:p:2355-2376
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2018.1495825
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2018.1495825
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2018.1495825?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markku Lanne & Helmut Lütkepohl & Pentti Saikkonen, 2003. "Test Procedures for Unit Roots in Time Series with Level Shifts at Unknown Time," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(1), pages 91-115, February.
    2. Kapetanios, George & Shin, Yongcheol, 2008. "GLS detrending-based unit root tests in nonlinear STAR and SETAR models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 377-380, September.
    3. Dick van Dijk & Timo Terasvirta & Philip Hans Franses, 2002. "Smooth Transition Autoregressive Models — A Survey Of Recent Developments," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 1-47.
    4. Bec, Frédérique & Bouabdallah, Othman & Ferrara, Laurent, 2015. "Comparing the shape of recoveries: France, the UK and the US," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 327-334.
    5. Terasvirta, T & Anderson, H M, 1992. "Characterizing Nonlinearities in Business Cycles Using Smooth Transition Autoregressive Models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(S), pages 119-136, Suppl. De.
    6. Granger, Clive W J, 1993. "Strategies for Modelling Nonlinear Time-Series Relationships," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 69(206), pages 233-238, September.
    7. Beaudry, Paul & Koop, Gary, 1993. "Do recessions permanently change output?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 149-163, April.
    8. Kapetanios, George & Shin, Yongcheol & Snell, Andy, 2003. "Testing for a unit root in the nonlinear STAR framework," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 359-379, February.
    9. Sollis, Robert, 2009. "A simple unit root test against asymmetric STAR nonlinearity with an application to real exchange rates in Nordic countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 118-125, January.
    10. Sollis, Robert, 2011. "Testing the unit root hypothesis against TAR nonlinearity using STAR-based tests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 19-22, July.
    11. Mototsugu Shintani, 2013. "The Inf-T Test For A Unit Root Against Asymmetric Exponential Smooth Transition Autoregressive Models," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 64(1), pages 3-15, March.
    12. Chi-Young Choi & Young-Kyu Moh, 2007. "How useful are tests for unit-root in distinguishing unit-root processes from stationary but non-linear processes?," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 10(1), pages 82-112, March.
    13. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2013_033 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Bradley, Michael D & Jansen, Dennis W, 1997. "Nonlinear Business Cycle Dynamics: Cross-country Evidence on the Persistence of Aggregate Shocks," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(3), pages 495-509, July.
    15. Elliott, Graham & Rothenberg, Thomas J & Stock, James H, 1996. "Efficient Tests for an Autoregressive Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 813-836, July.
    16. Gadea, María Dolores & Gomez-Loscos, Ana & Perez-Quiros, Gabriel, 2017. "Dissecting US recoveries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 59-63.
    17. James Morley & Jeremy Piger, 2012. "The Asymmetric Business Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 208-221, February.
    18. Lütkepohl,Helmut & Krätzig,Markus (ed.), 2004. "Applied Time Series Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521547871.
    19. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    20. M. Ayhan Kose & Christopher Otrok & Eswar Prasad, 2012. "Global Business Cycles: Convergence Or Decoupling?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(2), pages 511-538, May.
    21. Tarlok Singh, 2012. "Testing nonlinearities in economic growth in the OECD countries: an evidence from SETAR and STAR models," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(30), pages 3887-3908, October.
    22. White, Halbert, 1982. "Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Misspecified Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 1-25, January.
    23. Bradley Michael D. & Jansen Dennis W., 2000. "Are Business Cycle Dynamics the Same across Countries? Testing Linearity around the Globe," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(2), pages 1-23, July.
    24. Harding, Don & Pagan, Adrian, 2002. "Dissecting the cycle: a methodological investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 365-381, March.
    25. Psaradakis Zacharias & Spagnolo Nicola, 2002. "Power Properties of Nonlinearity Tests for Time Series with Markov Regimes," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(3), pages 1-16, November.
    26. Clements, Michael P & Krolzig, Hans-Martin, 2003. "Business Cycle Asymmetries: Characterization and Testing Based on Markov-Switching Autoregressions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 21(1), pages 196-211, January.
    27. Bec, Frederique & Guay, Alain & Guerre, Emmanuel, 2008. "Adaptive consistent unit-root tests based on autoregressive threshold model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 94-133, January.
    28. Addo, Peter Martey & Billio, Monica & Guégan, Dominique, 2014. "The univariate MT-STAR model and a new linearity and unit root test procedure," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 4-19.
    29. Enders, Walter & Granger, Clive W J, 1998. "Unit-Root Tests and Asymmetric Adjustment with an Example Using the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(3), pages 304-311, July.
    30. Kim, Tae-Hwan & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 2002. "Unit root tests with a break in innovation variance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 365-387, August.
    31. Hansen, Bruce E, 1992. "The Likelihood Ratio Test under Nonstandard Conditions: Testing the Markov Switching Model of GNP," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(S), pages 61-82, Suppl. De.
    32. Joon Y. Park & Mototsugu Shintani, 2005. "Testing for a Unit Root against Transitional Autoregressive Models," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 05010, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    33. Harvey David I & Leybourne Stephen J & Xiao Bin, 2008. "A Powerful Test for Linearity When the Order of Integration is Unknown," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(3), pages 1-24, September.
    34. Lee, Tae-Hwy & White, Halbert & Granger, Clive W. J., 1993. "Testing for neglected nonlinearity in time series models : A comparison of neural network methods and alternative tests," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 269-290, April.
    35. Hess, Gregory D & Iwata, Shigeru, 1997. "Measuring and Comparing Business-Cycle Features," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(4), pages 432-444, October.
    36. Pippenger, Michael K & Goering, Gregory E, 1993. "A Note on the Empirical Power of Unit Root Tests under Threshold Processes," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 55(4), pages 473-481, November.
    37. Jen-Je Su & Jeremy K. Nguyen, 2013. "GLS detrending in Sollis nonlinear unit root tests," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(13), pages 1259-1262, September.
    38. Engel, J. & Haugh, D. & Pagan, A., 2005. "Some methods for assessing the need for non-linear models in business cycle analysis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 651-662.
    39. Beatriz C. Galvao, Ana, 2002. "Can non-linear time series models generate US business cycle asymmetric shape?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 187-194, October.
    40. Stephen Leybourne & Paul Newbold & Dimitrios Vougas, 1998. "Unit roots and smooth transitions," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 83-97, January.
    41. Lütkepohl,Helmut & Krätzig,Markus (ed.), 2004. "Applied Time Series Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521839198.
    42. Clive Granger & Tae-Hwy Lee, 1999. "The effect of aggregation on nonlinearity," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 259-269.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rajpal, Akanksha & Bhatia, Sumit Kaur & Hiremath, Kirankumar R., 2022. "Inspecting the stability of non-linear IS-LM model with dual time delay," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 165(P2).
    2. Kai Zheng & Weidong Xu & Xili Zhang, 2023. "Multivariate Regime Switching Model Estimation and Asset Allocation," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(1), pages 165-196, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lopes, Artur Silva & Zsurkis, Gabriel Florin, 2017. "Are linear models really unuseful to describe business cycle data?," Economics Discussion Papers 2017-5, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    2. Silva Lopes, Artur C. & Florin Zsurkis, Gabriel, 2015. "Revisiting non-linearities in business cycles around the world," MPRA Paper 65668, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Sandberg, Rickard, 2016. "Trends, unit roots, structural changes, and time-varying asymmetries in U.S. macroeconomic data: the Stock and Watson data re-examined," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 699-713.
    4. Chen, Shyh-Wei, 2014. "Smooth transition, non-linearity and current account sustainability: Evidence from the European countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 541-554.
    5. Chen, Shyh-Wei & Xie, Zixiong, 2015. "Testing for current account sustainability under assumptions of smooth break and nonlinearity," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 142-156.
    6. Niels Haldrup & Robinson Kruse & Timo Teräsvirta & Rasmus T. Varneskov, 2013. "Unit roots, non-linearities and structural breaks," Chapters, in: Nigar Hashimzade & Michael A. Thornton (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Macroeconomics, chapter 4, pages 61-94, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Dilem Yildirim & Ralf Becker & Denise R Osborn, 2009. "Bootstrap Unit Root Tests for Nonlinear Threshold Models," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0915, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    8. Stéphane Goutte & David Guerreiro & Bilel Sanhaji & Sophie Saglio & Julien Chevallier, 2019. "International Financial Markets," Post-Print halshs-02183053, HAL.
    9. Chen, Shyh-Wei & Hsu, Chi-Sheng, 2016. "Threshold, smooth transition and mean reversion in inflation: New evidence from European countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 23-36.
    10. Chevallier, Julien, 2011. "Evaluating the carbon-macroeconomy relationship: Evidence from threshold vector error-correction and Markov-switching VAR models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2634-2656.
    11. James Morley & Jeremy Piger, 2006. "The Importance of Nonlinearity in Reproducing Business Cycle Features," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Nonlinear Time Series Analysis of Business Cycles, pages 75-95, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    12. M. J. Herrerias & Javier Ordoñez, 2011. "If the Unites States sneezes, does the world need paracetamol?," Working Papers 2011/03, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    13. Xie, Zixiong & Chen, Shyh-Wei & Wu, An-Chi, 2019. "Asymmetric adjustment, non-linearity and housing price bubbles: New international evidence," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    14. Sigl-Grüb, C. & Schiereck, D., 2010. "Speculation and Nonlinear Price Dynamics in Commodity Futures Markets," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 56603, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    15. Chen, Shyh-Wei, 2011. "Current account deficits and sustainability: Evidence from the OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1455-1464, July.
    16. Morley James & Piger Jeremy & Tien Pao-Lin, 2013. "Reproducing business cycle features: are nonlinear dynamics a proxy for multivariate information?," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(5), pages 483-498, December.
    17. LeBaron, Blake, 2003. "Non-Linear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance,: Philip Hans Franses and Dick van Dijk, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, 296 pp., Paperback, ISBN 0-521-77965-0, $33, [UK pound]22.95, [," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 751-752.
    18. Khalid Kisswani & Salah Nusair, 2014. "Nonlinear convergence in Asian interest and inflation rates: evidence from Asian countries," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 155-186, August.
    19. Joon Y. Park & Mototsugu Shintani, 2016. "Testing For A Unit Root Against Transitional Autoregressive Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(2), pages 635-664, May.
    20. Frédérique Bec & Mélika Ben Salem & Marine Carrasco, 2010. "Detecting Mean Reversion in Real Exchange Rates from a Multiple Regime star Model," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 99-100, pages 395-427.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:22:p:2355-2376. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.