Page - 111 - in The Austrian Business Cycle in the European Context

111 This result leads to interesting conclusions concerning the compa- rability of different studies on business cycles. If total production is regarded as the series representing the business cycle, then GDP as well as gross value added (in our case without agriculture and forestry) give similar results for the dates of turning points as de- rived by the Bry-Boschan routine. In the case of an analysis focus- ing on industrial production or a measure close to it, turning points are dated earlier. The largest part of all other components - contributing to Austrian total production - shows some leading or coincident properties according to the average and the median criteria. Only autJK (the sector covering financial, real estate, renting and business services) seems to lag clearly by one quarter, with the lag in the case of troughs being somewhat higher. For the German economy, not only the industrial sector (gerCDE) and gross value added (gerGVA and gerGV Aex) lead the Aus- trian cycle, but also GDP as a whole seems to exhibit this property. While euro area aggregates (eurGDP and eurGDPex) show a short lead of approximately half a quarter in the case of averages, the median suggests a coincident pattern of turning points. If we compare our leading and lagging properties found by look- ing at cross-correlations with those of turning points for first-order- differenced data, we are faced with inconclusive and sometimes contradicting results. This unpleasant picture is broadly confirmed in the turning point analysis comparing average and median leads and lags in Table A 3 a. For HP-filtered data, the situation is somewhat better but still some puzzles arise, which make a serious interpretation difficult. Thus, Table A 1 b shows for the German sec- tor of trade, restaurant and transport services (gerGHI) a consider- able lag of this series, according to the maximum cross-correlation as well as the mean delay criterion. Turning point analysis, how- ever, suggests a leading behaviour for averages and medians alike.