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The measurement and early warning of real estate risk are important to prevent and defuse major financial risks, and they form a basis for high-quality development. This paper assessed the internal and external environments of the real estate market; constructed a real estate risk indicator system from the aspects of market level, real estate enterprises, policy factors and financial institutions; and implemented a PSO-SVM model to measure and warn of real estate risk. Empirical studies were conducted. The results show the following: (1) the synthetic real estate risk index well depicts the cyclical fluctuation of real estate risk in Beijing; (2) the warning model based on the PSO-SVM method exhibits better performance and higher warning accuracy than other models do.

Rather than stabilising aggregate demand, discretionary fiscal policy tends to amplify cyclical fluctuations of output. The commonly accepted reasons are political economy and uncertainty. In the EU, the pro-cyclical nature of discretionary fiscal policy has also been associated with the commonly agreed fiscal rules, which, for some observers, unduly limit the scope for stabilising output. Using panel data covering close to 40 EU and non-EU countries, we provide evidence that the volatility of output gap estimates is not a convincing explanation for pro-cyclical policies. With the exception of very large shocks, discretionary measures remain ill-timed from a stabilisation perspective even when observable and politically more meaningful indicators of the cycle are used. We also show that deviations from fiscal rules and the accumulation of government debt foster pro-cyclical fiscal policy. Lawmakers can run discretionary fiscal policy measures based on political economy considerations up to a point. Once debt grows too high, the leeway to stabilise output with discretionary fiscal policy measures fades. Complying with fiscal rules that limit the increase in government debt or keep a steady course in the face of cyclical fluctuation is conducive to counter-cyclical fiscal policy making.

This paper argues that estimates of intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) obtained from standard life-cycle models are subject to a downward bias because they neglect the life-cycle and demographic patterns of on-the-job human capital investment. Taking into account the fact that part of a worker's time at work goes to acquiring human capital in addition to his main task of producing goods, we extend the standard life-cycle model to include time spent on investing in on-the-job human capital and propose a new framework for identifying the IES. We obtain statistically significant evidence that conventional estimates of IES for total hours at work are biased downward about 20% at the intensive margin. The corresponding IES estimates for production hours are biased downward even more, which provides an explanation for why output fluctuation is greater than hours/employment fluctuation over the business cycle.

This paper uses spectral analysis to examine interrelationships between the daily returns generated by one US (S&P 500) and three major European (FTSE 100, DAX 30, CAC 40) share price indices. Evidence is found of strong interdependence between the European returns series, as well as a lead-lag relationship between the US and each of the European series, explained by non-synchronous trading. The spectra also reveal some evidence of cyclical fluctuation in the return series. The patterns are similar among the European series for cycles of all frequencies, while similarities between the US and the European series are evident at low, but not at high frequencies.

This article presents the Economic Security Index (ESI), a new measure of economic insecurity. The ESI assesses the individual-level occurrence of substantial year-to-year declines in available household resources, accounting for fluctuations not only in income but also in out-of-pocket medical expenses. It also assesses whether those experiencing such declines have sufficient liquid financial wealth to buffer against these shocks. We find that insecurity—the share of individuals experiencing substantial resource declines without adequate financial buffers—has risen steadily since the mid-1980s for virtually all subgroups of Americans, albeit with cyclical fluctuation. At the same time, we find that there is substantial disparity in the degree to which different subgroups are exposed to economic risk. As the ESI derives from a data-independent conceptual foundation, it can be measured using different panel datasets. We find that the degree and disparity by which insecurity has risen is robust across the best available sources.

The level of temporary help employment rose two-and-a-half fold between 1982 and 1988, was quite variable and had a disproportionately larger effect on employment flows. One conventional explanation suggests that changing demographic composition of the labor force in favor of groups preferring nontraditional employment arrangements fueled the temporary help boom. Demand-side views emphasize the volatility in labor demand, intensified price competition and the absence of employee benefit contributions. Empirical estimation confirms that demand-side forces predominate. Yet no labor supply variable is found to be positively associated with the extent of temporary employment. Cyclical fluctuation in output, intensified foreign competition and the magnitude of nonwage labor costs are all positively associated with temporary employment levels. The diminishing bargaining power of labor unions allows employers to exploit the labor cost savings of temporary hires, and the extent of paid time-off and the lack of flexibility in weekly hours of work play a weak role. The findings suggest why temporary job growth accelerated in the 1980s, as more firms employed a “core-periphery” human resource strategy. Public policy should adopt measures that attempt to limit the creation of temporary jobs to a level that accommodates the worker need for flexible annual work schedules.

The “re‐industrialisation” of America is the dominant topic today. It has come about because the United States economy did not live up to its expectations during the decade of the 1970s. As to what has caused such low economic performance, many speculations have been advanced, such as big government, high taxes, monetary maladjustments, the energy shortages, the high prices of energy, etc. However, one group of economists have attributed the dismal economic performance during the 1970s to the phenomenon of the “long‐wave cycles”. This cycle is also called the Kondratieff cycle, and occurs at intervals of forty to sixty years in a socio‐economic system resembling that of capitalism. According to the proponents of this theory since the last part of the eighteenth century, industrial capitalism has exhibited long waves of cyclical fluctuation in income, employment and prices. These economists believe that the “long‐wave cycles” are what have underlined recent United States economic ills.

ONE of the most clearly defined and closely studied phenomena in the movement of agricultural prices in Great Britain has been the recurring cycle in the prices and numbers of pigs. This cycle had seemed to be adequately explained by the " cobweb theorem." The cycle has generally been attributed in most of the important pig-producing countries to the time which producers take to expand or contract production when faced by a particularly favourable or unfavourable ratio of pig prices to the prices of the more important feeding stuffs used for pigs, and to the fact that most individual producers forget that others will act in the same way as they themselves. Messrs. Coase and Fowler have criticised this analysis on three main grounds.' Firstly, they question the use of the ratio of pig prices to feeding-stuff prices as a measure of the stimulus -given to increase or decrease the number of pigs. Secondly, they contend that, if farmers react immediately to changes in the profitability of pig feeding, the cycle would have a two-year period instead of the three and a half to fouryear period actually observed. Finally, they attempt to show statistically that pig producers do not, in fact, expect existing pig prices and costs to remain unchanged. Having thus rejected the essential points in the explanation which was accepted by the Reorganisation Commission for Pigs and Pig Products,2 they suggest that the true explanation of the cycle in this country may rest in the variations of demand, and in the response of foreign producers to price changes. They have not yet indicated how these factors can cause a cyclical fluctuation of the observed period, nor is it easy to see how they can have this effect. Messrs. Coase

OINCE 1970, Chinese sources have ended a decade of silence on quantitative developments in the economy by releasing statistical information which illuminates economic trends during the 1960's as well as after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1968). The purpose of this article is to combine this new material with previously available data to construct a series of industrial gross ou;tput value for most years of the period 1952-1971.' The years for which data gaps prevent us from offering output estimates include two periods of cyclical fluctuation: the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath (1958-1962), during which output spurted and then declined; and the Cultural Revolution, which saw a pause or temporary drop in industrial output. The principal result of this study is the annual output series for 1952-1971 shown in table 1. Our findings indicate that China has experienced substantial industrial growth during the past two decades, -and suggest an upward revision Of previous Western es!timates of her industrial progress, especially for the period since 1957.