Page - 9 - in The Austrian Business Cycle in the European Context

9 should develop somewhat more smoothly and volatility rising in NACE K, instead. All other economic activities like public administration, social ser- vices (containing education and health services) and other com- munity, social and personal services (including culture, sports, etc.) are not considered separately as the production of these services is not assumed to be subject to business cycle variations. Never- theless, such production is included in GVA and GDP figures. According to the general view, the typical business cycle lasts from around 2 to 8 years17• This calls for the use of economic time series covering some multiples of that time span in order to isolate cyclical frequencies and to identify a representative number of turning points for analytical purposes. Moreover, these series should be consistent so as to measure output over a long period in a similar way. Unfortunately, there have been several events which complicated the search for long and consistent time series, especially for euro area aggregates. The process of European integration - moving towards a common economic policy in the Union - required a harmonisation of the national accounts framework. Member States have been obliged to compile their GDP data according to the ESA95 regulation. Several further regulations have been passed, focussing particu- larly on national accounts aggregates. This was necessary be- cause gross national income constitutes the tax base of Member States' contributions to the Union budget. Furthermore, certain de- velopment programmes are related to the income of regions or countries and the Stability and Growth Pact is explicitly linked to the development of real GDP. 17 Burns -Mitchell (1946) defined it as phases between 6 and 32 quarters, Hording - Pagon (2002) between 5 and 32 quarters and there are several studies which take a time span between 8 and 32 quarters as a reference.