This is the most sophisticated and up-to-date econometric analysis of business cycles now available. Francis Diebold and Glenn Rudebusch have long been acknowledged as leading experts on business cycles. And here they present a highly integrative collection of their most important essays on the subject, along with a detailed introduction that draws together the book's principal themes and findings.

Diebold and Rudebusch use the latest quantitative methods to address five principal questions about the measurement, modeling, and forecasting of business cycles. They ask whether business cycles have become more moderate in the postwar period, concluding that recessions have, in fact, been shorter and shallower. They consider whether economic expansions and contractions tend to die of "old age." Contrary to popular wisdom, they find little evidence that expansions become more fragile the longer they last, although they do find that contractions are increasingly likely to end as they age. The authors discuss the defining characteristics of business cycles, focusing on how economic variables move together and on the timing of the slow alternation between expansions and contractions. They explore the difficulties of distinguishing between long-term trends in the economy and cyclical fluctuations. And they examine how business cycles can be forecast, looking in particular at how to predict turning points in cycles, rather than merely the level of future economic activity. They show here that the index of leading economic indicators is a poor predictor of future economic activity, and consider what we can learn from other indicators, such as financial variables. Throughout, the authors make use of a variety of advanced econometric techniques, including nonparametric analysis, fractional integration, and regime-switching models. Business Cycles is crucial reading for policymakers, bankers, and business executives.

'A fascinating book . . . Bhaskar is a reassuringly positive and often witty guide' Observer 'A fascinating, must-read book covering a vast array of topics from the arts to the sciences, technology to policy. This is a brilliant and thought-provoking response to one of the most critical questions of our age: how we will come up with the next generation of innovation and truly fresh ideas?' Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of DeepMind and Google VP 'Have "big ideas" and big social and economic changes disappeared from the scene? Michael Bhaskar's Human Frontiers is the best look at these all-important questions.' Tyler Cowen, author of The Great Stagnation and The Complacent Class 'Michael Bhaskar explores the disturbing possibility that a complacent, cautious civilization has lost ambition and is slowly sinking into technological stagnation rather than accelerating into a magical future. He is calling for bold, adventurous innovators to go big again. A fascinating book' Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works Where next for humanity? Is our future one of endless improvement in all areas of life, from technology and travel to medicine, movies and music? Or are our best years behind us? It's easy to assume that the story of modern society is one of consistent, radical progress, but this is no longer true: more academics are researching than ever before but their work leads to fewer breakthroughs; innovation is incremental, limited to the digital sphere; the much-vaunted cure for cancer remains elusive; space travel has stalled since the heady era of the moonshot; politics is stuck in a rut, and the creative industries seem trapped in an ongoing cycle of rehashing genres and classics. The most ambitious ideas now struggle. Our great-great-great grandparents saw a series of transformative ideas revolutionise almost everything in just a few decades. Today, in contrast, short termism, risk aversion, and fractious decision making leaves the landscape timid and unimaginative. In Human Frontiers, Michael Bhaskar draws a vividly entertaining and expansive portrait of humanity's relationship with big ideas. He argues that stasis at the frontier is the result of having already pushed so far, taken easy wins and started to hit limits. But new thinking is still possible. By adopting bold global approaches, deploying cutting edge technology like AI and embracing a culture of change, we can push through and expand afresh. Perfect for anyone who has wondered why we haven't gone further, this book shows in fascinating detail how the 21st century could stall - or be the most revolutionary time in human history.

This book, and its companion volume in the Econometric Society Monographs series (ESM number 33), present a collection of papers by Clive W. J. Granger. His contributions to economics and econometrics, many of them seminal, span more than four decades and touch on all aspects of time series analysis. The papers assembled in this volume explore topics in spectral analysis, seasonality, nonlinearity, methodology, and forecasting. Those in the companion volume investigate themes in causality, integration and cointegration, and long memory. The two volumes contain the original articles as well as an introduction written by the editors.

In these three essays, Professor Granger explains the process of constructing and evaluating an empirical model. Drawing on a wide range of cases and vignettes from economics, finance, politics and environment economics, as well as from art, literature, and the entertainment industry, Professor Granger combines rigor with intuition to provide a unique and entertaining insight into one of the most important subjects in modern economics. Chapter 1 deals with Specification. Chapter 2 considers Evaluation, and argues that insufficent evaluation is undertaken by economists, and that models should be evaluated in terms of the quality of their output. In Chapter 3, the question of how to evaluate forecasts is considered at several levels of increasing depth.

Sufficient provisioning for health and social protection will help support a swift, inclusive recovery in Pacific island countries. This edition of the Pacific Economic Monitor discusses the outlook for 2021 and key issues for recovery from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis, including vaccine procurement and distribution.

This book provides a formal analysis of the models, procedures, and measures of economic forecasting with a view to improving forecasting practice. David Hendry and Michael Clements base the analyses on assumptions pertinent to the economies to be forecast, viz. a non-constant, evolving economic system, and econometric models whose form and structure are unknown a priori. The authors find that conclusions which can be established formally for constant-parameter stationary processes and correctly-specified models often do not hold when unrealistic assumptions are relaxed. Despite the difficulty of proceeding formally when models are mis-specified in unknown ways for non-stationary processes that are subject to structural breaks, Hendry and Clements show that significant insights can be gleaned. For example, a formal taxonomy of forecasting errors can be developed, the role of causal information clarified, intercept corrections re-established as a method for achieving robustness against forms of structural change, and measures of forecast accuracy re-interpreted.

Developed fifty years ago by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the analytic methods of business cycles and economic indicators enable economists to forecast economic trends by examining the repetitive sequences that occur in business cycles. The methodology has proven to be an inexpensive and useful tool that is now used extensively throughout the world. In recent years, however, significant new developments have emerged in the field of business cycles and economic indicators. This volume contains twenty-two articles by international experts who are working with new and innovative approaches to indicator research. They cover advances in three broad areas of research: the use of new developments in economic theory and time-series analysis to rationalize existing systems of indicators; more appropriate methods to evaluate the forecasting records of leading indicators, particularly of turning point probability; and the development of new indicators.

This report outlines economic prospects in developing Asia amid global turbulence and lingering pandemic risks. It discusses the implications of school closures and the invasion of Ukraine, and explores mobilizing taxes for development. Developing Asia's outlook remains positive, with growth of 5.2% expected in 2022 and 5.3% in 2023. Downside risks include spillover from geopolitical tensions, such as via higher-than-expected commodity prices. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has upended the global economic outlook and greatly amplified uncertainty for a world economy still contending with COVID-19. Aggressive monetary policy tightening in the United States could lead to financial instability. In the medium term, scarring from the pandemic poses significant risks, including learning losses from continued school closures that could worsen economic inequality. The region's economies urgently need to mobilize fiscal resources to restore the health of public finances and build a more inclusive and sustainable future. Opportunities to strengthen revenue will depend on specific circumstances, but more efficient value-added tax and better-optimized tax incentives hold promise for many economies. Strengthening personal income and property taxes can raise additional revenue and make tax systems more progressive. Significant opportunities exist to expand the use of tax and other fiscal instruments to tackle environmental and health priorities while raising revenue.

This book provides an introduction to the methods employed in forecasting the future state of the economy. It provides a comprehensive coverage of methods and applications in this fast-growing area and is intended for use in postgraduate and upper-level undergraduate courses. Part I outlines the available techniques, particularly those used in business forecasting and econometric forecasting. The state of the art in time series modelling is reviewed and includes a discussion of Box-Jenkins models, the vector autogressive approach and cointegration. Ways of combining forecasts are also examined in detail. Part II considers the most important applications of forecasting. Applications in microeconomics include demand and sales forecasting, the use of anticipations data, leading indicators and scenario analysis. In macroeconomics the emphasis is on why errors occur in forecasting asset market prices, including implications of the efficient markets hypothesis for foreign markets, stock market prices and commodity market prices. The book ends with a discussion of the appropriateness of various techniques, recent developments in forecasting, and the links between economic forecasting and government policy.

The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies.

Growth in the region is expected to slow sharply to 2.2% in 2020 under the effects of the current health emergency and then rebound to 6.2% in 2021. Excluding Asia's high-income newly industrialized economies, growth will drop from 5.7% to 2.4% this year before recovering to 6.7% next year. Headline inflation accelerated in 2019 as food prices edged up but remained low by historical standards. Inflation will climb further to 3.2% in 2020, but declining food prices in the latter half of the year will set the stage for easing inflation in 2021. Downside risks to the outlook are severe, most notably from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In these difficult times, when challenges to growth abound, innovation is critical to inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth. While some economies in developing Asia are near or at the global innovation frontier, many others lag behind. This issue of the Asian Development Outlook includes a Special Topic: The Impact of the Coronavirus Outbreak-An Update.