Stylized Facts: Results

Abstract

This chapter presents the stylized facts of business cycles, which should be explained by the models of Part III. The most important results are contained in Section 4.1, which investigates the cyclical behavior of the components of GNP. The main result of this section, the existence of a regular cycle of about eight years in fixed investment, is subjected to further tests in Section 4.2 by the use of longer data series and different detrending procedures. Section 4.3 takes a closer look at private consumption, its components and the relationship to disposable income. Section 4.4 extends the analysis to nominal variables, namely prices and wages. The relationship between nominal and real variables is the topic of Section 4.5.