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The Beveridge-Nelson Decomposition in Retrospect and Prospect

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  • Charles R. Nelson

Abstract

Beveridge and Nelson [Beveridge, Stephen, Nelson, Charles R., 1981. A new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the 'business cycle'. Journal of Monetary Economics 7, 151-174] proposed that the long-run forecast is a measure of trend for time series such as GDP that do not follow a deterministic path in the long run. They showed that if the series is stationary in first differences, then the estimated trend is a random walk with drift that accounts for growth, and the cycle is stationary. In contrast to linear de-trending, the smoother of Hodrick and Prescott (1981) and Hodrick and Prescott [Hodrick, Robert, Prescott, Edward C., 1997. Post-war US business cycles: An empirical investigation. Journal of Money Credit and Banking 29 (1), 1-16] and the unobserved components model of Harvey, [Harvey, A.C., 1985. Trends and cycles in macroeconomic time series. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 3, 216-227]. Watson [Watson, Mark W., 1986. Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends Journal of Monetary Economics 18, 49-75] and Clark [Clark, Peter K., 1987. The cyclical component of US economic activity. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 102 (4), 797-814], the BN decomposition attributes most variation in GDP to trend shocks while the cycles are short and brief. Since each is an estimate of the transitory part of GDP that will die out, it seems natural to compare cycle measures by their ability to forecast future growth. The results presented here suggest that cycle measures contain little if any information beyond the short-term momentum captured by BN.
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  • Charles R. Nelson, 2006. "The Beveridge-Nelson Decomposition in Retrospect and Prospect," Working Papers UWEC-2007-30, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:udb:wpaper:uwec-2007-30
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    6. Chien, Chih-Chung & Chen, Shikuan & Chang, Ming-Jen, 2023. "Financial constraints on credit ratings and cash-flow sensitivity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    7. Elmar Mertens & James M. Nason, 2020. "Inflation and professional forecast dynamics: An evaluation of stickiness, persistence, and volatility," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(4), pages 1485-1520, November.
    8. Jun Ma & Mark E. Wohar, 2013. "An Unobserved Components Model that Yields Business and Medium-Run Cycles," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(7), pages 1351-1373, October.
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    10. Morley, James & Panovska, Irina B., 2020. "Is Business Cycle Asymmetry Intrinsic In Industrialized Economies?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(6), pages 1403-1436, September.
    11. João Sousa Andrade & António Portugal Duarte, 2014. "Output-gaps in the PIIGS Economies: An Ingredient of a Greek Tragedy," GEMF Working Papers 2014-06, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    12. James Morley & Benjamin Wong, 2020. "Estimating and accounting for the output gap with large Bayesian vector autoregressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(1), pages 1-18, January.
    13. Panovska, Irina & Ramamurthy, Srikanth, 2022. "Decomposing the output gap with inflation learning," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    14. Bhatt, Vipul & Kishor, N. Kundan, 2015. "Are all movements in food and energy prices transitory? Evidence from India," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 92-106.
    15. Biolsi, Christopher, 2023. "Do the Hamilton and Beveridge–Nelson filters provide the same information about output gaps? An empirical comparison for practitioners," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Yasutomo Murasawa, 2014. "Measuring the natural rates, gaps, and deviation cycles," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 495-522, September.
    17. Willie Lahari, 2011. "Assessing Business Cycle Synchronisation - Prospects for a Pacific Islands Currency Union," Working Papers 1110, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Oct 2011.
    18. Hessler, Andrew, 2023. "Unobserved components model estimates of credit cycles: Tests and predictions," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    19. Martin Boďa & Mariana Považanová, 2023. "How credible are Okun coefficients? The gap version of Okun’s law for G7 economies," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1467-1514, June.
    20. James Morley, 2014. "Measuring Economic Slack: A Forecast-Based Approach with Applications to Economies in Asia and the Pacific," BIS Working Papers 451, Bank for International Settlements.
    21. Mardi Dungey & Jan P.A.M. Jacobs & Jing Jian & Simon van Norden, 2013. "Trend-Cycle Decomposition: Implications from an Exact Structural Identification," CIRANO Working Papers 2013s-23, CIRANO.
    22. Sun Xiaojin & Tsang Kwok Ping, 2019. "What cycles? Data detrending in DSGE models," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 23(3), pages 1-23, June.
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    24. João Sousa Andrade & António Portugal Duarte, 2014. "Output-gaps in the PIIGS Economies: An Ingredient of a Greek Tragedy," GEMF Working Papers 2014-06, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.

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