The effects of institutional and technological change and business cycle fluctiations on seasonal patterns in quarterly industrial production series

Abstract

Changes in the seasonal patterns of macroeconomic time series may be due to the effects of business cycle fluctuations or to technological and institutional change or both. We examine the relative importance of these two sources of change in seasonality for industrial productionseries of the G7 countries. We find compelling evidence that the effects of gradual institutional and technological change are much more important than the effects attributable to the business cycle.Nonlinear time series;Seasonality;Smooth transition autoregression;time-varying parameter;structural change