Are Output Fluctuations Transitory?
Abstract
According to the conventional view of the business cycle, fluctuations in output represent temporary deviations from trend. The purpose of this paper is to question this conventional view. If fluctuations in output are dominated by temporary deviations from the natural rate of output, then an unexpected change in output today should not substantially change one's forecast of output in, say, five or ten years. Our examination of quarterly postwar United States data leads us to be skeptical about this implication. The data suggest that an unexpected change in real GNP of 1 percent should change one's forecast by over 1 percent over a long horizon.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by Harvard University Department of Economics in its series Scholarly Articles with number 3122545.Length:
Date of creation: 1987
Date of revision:
Publication status: Published in Quarterly Journal of Economics
Handle: RePEc:hrv:faseco:3122545
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Littauer Center, Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-495-2144
Fax: 617-495-7730
Web page: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Campbell, John Y & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1987. "Are Output Fluctuations Transitory?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 857-80, November.
- John Y. Campbell & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1988. "Are Output Fluctuations Transitory?," NBER Working Papers 1916, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Flavin, Marjorie A, 1983. "Excess Volatility in the Financial Markets: A Reassessment of the Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(6), pages 929-56, December.
- Newey, Whitney K & West, Kenneth D, 1987.
"A Simple, Positive Semi-definite, Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Consistent Covariance Matrix,"
Econometrica,
Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 703-08, May.
- Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1986. "A Simple, Positive Semi-Definite, Heteroskedasticity and AutocorrelationConsistent Covariance Matrix," NBER Technical Working Papers 0055, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Nelson, Charles R & Kang, Heejoon, 1979.
"Spurious Periodicity in Inappropriately Detrended Time Series,"
The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS)
161, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
- Nelson, Charles R & Kang, Heejoon, 1981. "Spurious Periodicity in Inappropriately Detrended Time Series," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 741-51, May.
- Gregory Mankiw, N. & Shapiro, Matthew D., 1985.
"Trends, random walks, and tests of the permanent income hypothesis,"
Journal of Monetary Economics,
Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 165-174, September.
- Matthew D. Shapiro & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1984. "Trends, Random Walks, and Tests of the Permanent Income Hypothesis," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 725, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
- Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-75, July.
- Ansley, Craig F. & Newbold, Paul, 1980. "Finite sample properties of estimators for autoregressive moving average models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 159-183, June.
- Milton Friedman & Anna J. Schwartz, 1982. "Monetary Trends in the United States and United Kingdom: Their Relation to Income, Prices, and Interest Rates, 1867-1975," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie82-2, October.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
Lists
This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hrv:faseco:3122545For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Reinhard Engels).
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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

