Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters for Economic Time Series

TL;DR: The authors developed a set of approximate band-pass filters and illustrates their application to measuring the business-cycle component of macroeconomic activity, and compared them with several alternative filters commonly used for extracting business cycle components.

Abstract: Band-pass filters are useful in a wide range of economic contexts. This paper develops a set of approximate band-pass filters and illustrates their application to measuring the business-cycle component of macroeconomic activity. Detailed comparisons are made with several alternative filters commonly used for extracting business-cycle components.

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