Business cycle theory has been one of the fastest growing fields in modern nonlinear economic dynamics. This book presents new mathematical methods for global analysis which have not previously been available in this easily accessible form. In addition it contains a presentation of full analyses of several models left open in the 1950s when the tools then available did not permit more systematic analysis.

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This monograph is devoted to the analysis of the dynamics of business cycles and stabilization policies. The analysis is conducted in models of the AS-AD type, focusing on involuntary unemployment and capital accumulation. Major conclusions are the following. (1) Sectoral imbalances, once emphasized by such business-cycle theorists as K. Marx, A. Spiethoff, and F.A. Hayek, are rectified in finite time by competitive investment allocation, leaving aggregate variables as the main variables of business cycle dynamics. (2) The chronology of events during a cycle is established, which resolves the so-called real wage puzzle. (3) Owing to the crowding-out effect on investment, fiscal stabilization policies can destabilize the business cycle dynamics if implemented too intensively. (4) If coordinated properly, monetary stabilization policies can remove the destabilizing tendency of fiscal stabilization policies.

As the 55th anniversary of the bank holiday of March 1933 approached, financial instability was a main topic in the financial press. Daily reports appeared of international debt crises, of the covert bankruptcy of deposit insurance, and of the near bankruptcy of one great financial institution after another. The great stock market crash of October 19 and 20, 1987, demonstrated that extreme instability can happen. It is generally asserted that the consequences of October 19th and 20th would have been disastrous if the Federal Reserve and Treasury interventions had not set things right. In 1933, financial markets in the United States and throughout the capitalist world collapsed. In the light of historical experience, the past 55 years are the anomaly. The papers collected in this volume come from various backgrounds and research paradigms. A common theme runs through these papers that makes the collection both interesting and important: The authors take seriously the obvious evidence that capitalist economies progress through time by lurching. Whether a particular study starts from household utility maximization or from the processes by which productive structures are reproduced and expanded, the authors are united in accepting the evidence that financial instability is a significant characteristic of modern capitalism.

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.

Originally published in 1942, this landmark volume makes available the entire business-cycle analysis of the Dutch economist, Jan Tinbergen, whose work in economic dynamics stimulated a new school of econometric research. The book explains what is typical and common in economic movements - the system of supply and demand schedules used to describe a market, certain technical relations, and 'balance equations'.

This book presents the contributions to the first Wild@Ace conference. The acronym stands for ?Workshop on Industrial and Labor Dynamics ? The Agent-Based Computational Aproach?, and it has been the first event ever focusing on the very promising use of the agent-based simulation approach for investigation of labor economics and industrial organization issues.Agent-based models are computer models in which a multitude of agents ? each embodied in a specific software code ? interact. These agents can represent individuals households, firms, institutions, etc. Moreover, ?special? agents can be added to observe and monitor individual and collective behavior. One of the main purpose of writing an ACE model is to gain intuitions on the two-way feedback between the microstructure and the macrostructure of a phenomenon of interest. How is it that simple aggregate regularities may arise from individual disorder? Or that a nice structure at an individual level may lead to a complete absence of regularity in the aggregate? How is it that the complex interaction of very simple individuals may lead to surprisingly complicated aggregate dynamics? Or that sophisticated agents may be unable to organize themselves in any interesting way?The book includes contributions by some of the most distinguished researchers in the field, such as the economists Alan Kirman, Giovanni Dosi, Leigh Tesfatsion and Mauro Gallegati, and the sociologist Nigel Gilbert.

Labor Markets and Business Cycles integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The book focuses on the labor wedge that arises when the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure does not equal the marginal product of labor. According to competitive models of the labor market, the labor wedge should be constant and equal to the labor income tax rate. But in U.S. data, the wedge is strongly countercyclical, making it seem as if recessions are periods when workers are dissuaded from working and firms are dissuaded from hiring because of an increase in the labor income tax rate. When job searches are time consuming and wages are flexible, search frictions--the cost of a job search--act like labor adjustment costs, further exacerbating inconsistencies between the competitive model and data. The book shows that wage rigidities can reconcile the search model with the data, providing a quantitatively more accurate depiction of labor markets, consumption, and investment dynamics. Developing detailed search and matching models, Labor Markets and Business Cycles will be the main reference for those interested in the intersection of labor market dynamics and business cycle research.

This introduction to modern business cycle theory uses a neoclassical growth framework to study the economic fluctuations associated with the business cycle. Presenting advances in dynamic economic theory and computational methods, it applies concepts to t