A Search for Business Cycles with Spectral Analysis

There has been considerable debate in recent years about whether well-defined business cycles even exist. At one extreme are those who assert that so-called business cycles are caused by exogenous shocks. At the other extreme are those who believe that business cycles may be endogenous, i.e., the economy has a natural tendency to go through periods of recession and depression. We used spectral analysis to search for business cycles, but we did not find any clear evidence of their existence.