Page - 114 - in The Austrian Business Cycle in the European Context

114 cording to the cross-correlation criteria. Compared with BK-filtered data, only for some series where short-lived shocks (like weather conditions for instance) play a more important role, differences can be observed. Concerning the highest cross-correlations ob- served for various leads and lags, differences between the HP- and the BK-filtered data are minor, whereas they are substantial when compared with the first-order-differenced data. Results of coherence estimates are quite in line with theory. Co- movement with the reference series for Austria is largest for the in- dustrial sector (autCDE) and smallest for financial intermediations services and real estate, renting and business activities (autJK). Furthermore, there is a high degree of comovement between the Austrian and the German business cycle, represented by the cy- clical variation of gerG V Aex ( excluding agriculture and forestry), which is higher than compared with the euro area cycle (eurGDPex) and is consistent over all three filtering methods. The calculation of shifts according to the mean delay statistics displayed much shorter leads and lags than with the maximum cross-correlation criterion. However, the signs of the shifts seem to be rather similar in the case of HP- and BK-filtered data, but not with first-order-differenced data. The Bry-Boschan dating procedure provides different information for all three filtering methods. Not one single turning point (even if one allows for some minor shift) is the same for the first-order- difference and the HP-filter case. Only the number of turning points was nearly the same in both cases, but much higher in the case of BK-filtered data. Interestingly, for both methods showing rather erratic movements in their filtered results, fewer turning points have been detected than for the BK-filtered data. The turn- ing point detection criteria of the Bry-Boschan procedure proba- bly discard a lot of possible points if they are not identified with certainty.