Page - 5 - in The Austrian Business Cycle in the European Context

5 the margin is not the aim of this study, however. This would require the use of business survey data with leading properties and either detrending methods based on non-symmetrical filters or series forecasts based on real-time data in order to circumvent the end- point problem of symmetrical filters. Furthermore, variables which can explain shocks to business cycle variations (for instance oil price and exchange rate variations) are not considered explicitly, as they are assumed to affect all countries observed in the same direction12 or they feed into the business cycle in the end. Diagram 1 gives an overview over the typical methodological steps to be taken in business cycle analysis. It presents a stylised flow of several procedures. However, this does not mean that these steps have to be followed consecutively, as some methods cover several of them at the same time. Following this sequence, the underlying study is organised accordingly. The first chapter presents the data and the procedures applied to prepare them for this study. The second deals with the various methods for ex- tracting the business cycle frequencies from the underlying data. Related to this, a literature survey of the various methods with an examination of their theoretical properties and empirical problems is provided. As different methods can produce substantially differ- ent results, not one single is chosen for this study but three different ones. In the next chapter several approaches for the identification of the business cycle from the transformed data are presented. Again, different methods are applied in order to check the ro- bustness of results. The fourth chapter addresses the problem of dating and analysing the business cycle for Austria. In the following chapter, the findings on dating, together with some stylised facts, are compared with the results from other studies. The last chapter offers the conclusions. 12 This assumption seems to be justified if the economies considered have similar structures, as it is plausible to assume.