The Measurement and Asymmetry Tests of Business Cycle: Evidence from China

Yue Liu; Gaoke Liao; Yue Liu; Gaoke Liao

doi:10.3934/QFE.2017.2.205

Quantitative Finance and Economics

2017, Volume 1, Issue 2: 205-218. doi: 10.3934/QFE.2017.2.205

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Research article Special Issues

The Measurement and Asymmetry Tests of Business Cycle: Evidence from China

Yue Liu ¹,
Gaoke Liao ^{2
,
,}

1.
School of Economics and Management, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu 215500, China
2.
College of Finance and Statistics, Hunan University, Changsha 410006, China

Received: 24 January 2017 Accepted: 24 March 2017 Published: 14 July 2017

In this paper, the dynamic factor model (DFM) is employed to measure China's business cycle with macroeconomic indexes from January 2000 to September 2016, so as to construct a business cycle measurement system in line with China's actual situation, based on which effective and timely macroeconomic regulation policies will be formulated to make China's economic operation stable and controllable. The empirical results show that China's economic operation has significant co-movement and asymmetric features; the dynamic factor model can depict China's business cycle factors and describe the internal co-movement operating mechanism of the economic fluctuation; the "three-tuple" method is used to test the deepness and steepness of asymmetry in each cycle stage, and it is found that the asymmetries of different cycle stages bear different characteristics, and China's current economic operation is in a stage where the long-term trend is downward adjustment and convergence.
- business cycle,
- dynamic factors,
- asymmetry
Citation: Yue Liu, Gaoke Liao. The Measurement and Asymmetry Tests of Business Cycle: Evidence from China[J]. Quantitative Finance and Economics, 2017, 1(2): 205-218. doi: 10.3934/QFE.2017.2.205

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Abstract

In this paper, the dynamic factor model (DFM) is employed to measure China's business cycle with macroeconomic indexes from January 2000 to September 2016, so as to construct a business cycle measurement system in line with China's actual situation, based on which effective and timely macroeconomic regulation policies will be formulated to make China's economic operation stable and controllable. The empirical results show that China's economic operation has significant co-movement and asymmetric features; the dynamic factor model can depict China's business cycle factors and describe the internal co-movement operating mechanism of the economic fluctuation; the "three-tuple" method is used to test the deepness and steepness of asymmetry in each cycle stage, and it is found that the asymmetries of different cycle stages bear different characteristics, and China's current economic operation is in a stage where the long-term trend is downward adjustment and convergence.

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