Common Trends and Common Cycles

The existence of a serial correlation common feature among the first differences of a set of I(1) variables implies the existence of a common cycle in the Beveridge-Nelson-Stock-Watson decomposition of those variables. A test for the existence of common cycles among cointegrated variables is developed. The test is used to examine the validity of the common trend-common cycle structure implied by Flavin's excess sensitivity hypothesis and Campbell and Mankiw's mixture of rational expectations and rule-of-thumb hypothesis for consumption and income. Linear independence between the cointegration and the cofeature vectors is exploited to decompose consumption and income into their trend and cycle components.