IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc14/100465.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are there Business Cycles beyond GDP? Alternative Measures to GDP at Business Cycle Frequencies

Author

Listed:
  • Maschke, Philip
  • Döpke, Jörg

Abstract

We discuss properties of alternatives or complements to GDP as a measure of welfare at business cycle frequencies. We argue that these figures are not useful to measure the welfare costs of business cycles. First, data is not available at an appropriate quality and frequency. Second, since the suggested time series sometimes correlate negatively with each other composite indices will lead by construction to very low welfare costs of business cycles. Third, cross-section and quasi-panel evidence based on different samples of countries reveals no impact of the stance of the business cycle on some suggested welfare measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Maschke, Philip & Döpke, Jörg, 2014. "Are there Business Cycles beyond GDP? Alternative Measures to GDP at Business Cycle Frequencies," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100465, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc14:100465
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/100465/1/VfS_2014_pid_740.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bohringer, Christoph & Jochem, Patrick E.P., 2007. "Measuring the immeasurable -- A survey of sustainability indices," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-8, June.
    2. Robert C. Feenstra & Robert Inklaar & Marcel P. Timmer, 2015. "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3150-3182, October.
    3. Simon Kuznets, 1934. "National Income, 1929-1932," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn34-1.
    4. Ann H. Stevens & Douglas L. Miller & Marianne E. Page & Mateusz Filipski, 2015. "The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Understanding Pro-cyclical Mortality," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 279-311, November.
    5. Angus Deaton, 2012. "The financial crisis and the well-being of Americans," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 64(1), pages 1-26, January.
    6. Brent Bleys, 2012. "Beyond GDP: Classifying Alternative Measures for Progress," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 355-376, December.
    7. Morten O. Ravn & Harald Uhlig, 2002. "On adjusting the Hodrick-Prescott filter for the frequency of observations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 371-375.
    8. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    9. Mark L. Egan & Casey B. Mulligan & Tomas J. Philipson, 2013. "Adjusting National Accounting for Health: Is the Business Cycle Countercyclical?," NBER Working Papers 19058, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Justin Wolfers, 2003. "Is Business Cycle Volatility Costly? Evidence from Surveys of Subjective Well‐Being," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 1-26, March.
    11. Elizabeth Stanton, 2007. "The Human Development Index: A History," Working Papers wp127, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    12. Ulrich van Suntum & Oliver Lerbs, 2011. "Theoretische Fundierung und Bewertung alternativer Methoden der Wohlfahrtsmessung," RatSWD Working Papers 181, German Data Forum (RatSWD).
    13. Lars Osberg & Andrew Sharpe, 2002. "An Index of Economic Well–Being for Selected OECD Countries," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 48(3), pages 291-316, September.
    14. repec:bfi:wpaper:2013-001 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Mallick, Debdulal, 2015. "Elusive Relationship between Business-cycle Volatility and Long-run Growth," MPRA Paper 64502, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. repec:grm:wpaper:201609 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Avdic, Daniel & de New, Sonja C. & Kamhöfer, Daniel A., 2020. "Economic downturns and mental wellbeing," DICE Discussion Papers 337, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    4. Mark Borgschulte & Paco Martorell, 2018. "Paying to Avoid Recession: Using Reenlistment to Estimate the Cost of Unemployment," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 101-127, July.
    5. Konon, Alexander & Fritsch, Michael & Kritikos, Alexander S., 2018. "Business cycles and start-ups across industries: An empirical analysis of German regions," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 742-761.
    6. Wang, Huixia & Wang, Chenggang & Halliday, Timothy J., 2018. "Health and health inequality during the great recession: Evidence from the PSID," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 17-30.
    7. Maravall, A. & del Rio, A., 2007. "Temporal aggregation, systematic sampling, and the Hodrick-Prescott filter," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 975-998, October.
    8. Jacobs, Jan & Tassenaar, Vincent, 2004. "Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 181-195, June.
    9. Sylviane Guillaumont Jeanneney & Sampawende Jules Tapsoba, 2011. "Pro cyclicité de la politique budgétaire et surveillance multilatérale dans les unions monétaires africaines," CERDI Working papers halshs-00554337, HAL.
    10. Martínez, Juan Francisco & Oda, Daniel, 2021. "Characterization of the Chilean financial cycle, early warning indicators and implications for macro-prudential policies," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 2(1).
    11. Morana, Claudio, 2024. "A new macro-financial condition index for the euro area," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 64-87.
    12. Chenggang Wang & Huixia Wang & Timothy J. Halliday, 2017. "Health and Health Inequality during the Great Recession: Evidence from the PSID," Working Papers 201703, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    13. Roger Perman & Christophe Tavera, 2007. "Testing for convergence of the Okun’s Law coefficient in Europe," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 45-61, March.
    14. Fiona Atkins, 2005. "Financial Crises and Money Demand in Jamaica," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0512, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    15. Massmann, Michael & Mitchell, James, 2003. "Reconsidering the evidence: Are Eurozone business cycles converging," ZEI Working Papers B 05-2003, University of Bonn, ZEI - Center for European Integration Studies.
    16. César Calderón & Roberto Duncan & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, 2016. "Do Good Institutions Promote Countercyclical Macroeconomic Policies?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 78(5), pages 650-670, October.
    17. Ivan Mendieta-Muñoz, 2014. "Is there any relationship between the rates of interest and profit in the U.S. economy?," Studies in Economics 1416, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    18. Martin Gächter & Alexander Gruber & Aleksandra Riedl, 2017. "Wage Divergence, Business Cycle Co-Movement and the Currency Union Effect," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(6), pages 1322-1342, November.
    19. Tommaso Proietti, 2012. "Seasonality, Forecast Extensions And Business Cycle Uncertainty," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 555-569, September.
    20. Lake, James & Linask, Maia K., 2016. "Could tariffs be pro-cyclical?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 124-146.
    21. Feng Zhu, 2016. "Understanding the changing equilibrium real interest rates in Asia-Pacific," BIS Working Papers 567, Bank for International Settlements.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:vfsc14:100465. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    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.