Page - 167 - in The Austrian Business Cycle in the European Context

167 locate a peak in-between in the second quarter of 1998. Obvi- ously, this peak is too low to be captured by our Bry-Boschan rou- tine, hence it was ignored. In Figure 9 these differences in the dating calendars are illustrated graphically. Both series show spikes of negative amplitude in the second quarter of 1997 and the first quarter of 1999. Looking at the thin line (representing just BK-filtered data), the trough in 2Q 1997 is deeper than the one observed in 1 Q 1999. For the bold line repre- senting the common component based on BK-filtered data, it is the other way round. Obviously, part of the amplitude in 2Q 1997 has been considered as idiosyncratic. Since the Bry-Boschan rou- tine considers within a close neighbourhood only the turning point with the largest amplitude, we get different dates for the troughs. The peak detected by Artis -Marcellino - Proietti (2004) in 2Q 1998 is too close to the high peak in 2000, which is the reason for the Bry-Boschan routine considering it only as an intermediate turn, al- though it can be observed in both of our series in Figure 9. If we define the business cycle as a domestic phenomenon, but accept influences from the international business cycle, then the dating calendar based on just BK-filtered series is the best choice. For those who regard the business cycle more as an international phenomenon, the dynamic factor model output is superior. If the settings prepared for our Bry-Boschan algorithm were to allow shorter cycles, also the peak described in Artis - Marcellino - Proi- etti (2004) would enter our calendars. Hence it depends on the preferences of the analyst or the economic policymaker, which calendar is most appropriate. In general, the turning points in our study based on BK-filtered data largely correspond to the ones found when using more advanced business cycle extraction methods. Concerning the dates located by our Bry-Boschan routine, it became apparent that studies based on Markov-switching model show rather similar results.