This article aims at constructing a new method for testing the statistical significance of seasonal fluctuations for non-stationary processes. The constructed test is based on a method of subsampling and on the spectral theory of Almost Periodically Correlated (APC) time series. In the article we consider an equation of a nonstationary process, containing a component which includes seasonal fluctuations and business cycle fluctuations, both described by an almost periodic function. We build subsampling test justifying the significance of frequencies obtained from the Fourier representation of the unconditional expectation of the process.

The empirical usefulness of the constructed test is examined for selected macroeconomic data. The article studies survey indicators of economic climate in industry, retail trade and consumption for European countries.

This paper proposes a microfounded model featuring frictional labor markets that generates procyclical R&D expenditures as a result of optimizing behavior by heterogeneous monopolistically competitive firms. This allows to show that business cycle fluctuations affect the aggregate endogenous growth rate of the economy. Consequently, transitory shocks leave lasting level effects. This mechanism is responsible for economically significant hysteresis effects that significantly increase the welfare cost of business cycles relative to the exogenous growth model. I show that this has serious policy implications and creates ample space for policy intervention. I find that several static and countercyclical subsidy schemes are welfare improving. Importantly, I find that due to labor market frictions subsidizing incumbent firms generates large and positive welfare effects.

In a national economy, are individual subnational regions business cycle takers or setters? We address this important regional policy question by investigating regional business cycles at NUTS-3 granularity in Poland (N = 73), using two metrics in parallel: GDP dynamics and unemployment. To extract the business cycle, we use a spatial Markov switching model that features both idiosyncratic business cycle fluctuations across regions (as a 2-state chain), as well as spatial interactions with other regions (as spatial autoregression). The posterior distribution of the parameters is simulated with a Metropolis-withinGibbs procedure. We find a clear division into business cycle setters and takers, the latter being largely (but not only) non-metropolitan regions.

We discuss the notion of the financial cycle making a clear indication that the thorough study of its empirical properties in case of developing economies is still missing. We focus on the observed series of credit and equity and make formal statistical inference about the properties of the cycles in case of Polish economy. The non-standard subsampling procedure and discrete spectral characteristics of almost periodically correlated time series are applied to make formal statistical inference about the cycle. We compare the results with those obtained for UK and USA. We extract the cyclical component and confront empirical properties of the financial cycle for small open economy with those established so far in case of developed economies.

The economic activity indicators in Poland during the years 1995‒2011 exhibit various cyclical patterns. Employing the Christiano – Fitzgerald band-pass filter and unobserved components model it is shown that the cyclical processes of Polish economic activity are driven by overlapping higher frequency fluctuations (3‒4 years) and longer cycles of 8.5 years. The cyclical fluctuations of construction, transportation and trade are dissimilar to gross value added. Economic activity in transportation leads and in construction lags the fluctuations of gross value added. Cyclical fluctuations of gross value added seem to be determined by industry and construction. Manufacturing, especially capital and intermediate goods fluctuations are responsible for the variation of industry. The production of non-durable consumer goods, energy and production of electric power are relatively the most desynchronized compared to industry. Production of electric power leads industrial production. Capital goods, intermediate goods and energy cycle phases are asymmetric – the slowdown lasts shorter and has higher amplitude compared to expansion. During the last crisis occurred the intensified variation of economic activity in Poland.