Are Economic Time Series Asymmetric over the Business Cycle?
提出一种统计检验方法，基于有限状态马尔可夫过程框架，检验失业率等经济变量在商业周期不同阶段是否呈现不对称行为（如突然上升和缓慢下降），并指出该方法可推广到其他经济时间序列的样本路径性质检验。
It has long been argued that major cyclical variables such as the unemployment rate display an asymmetric behavior over various phases of the business cycle. The paper provides a statistical test for this hypothesis. Using the framework of finite state Markov processes I implement a test to see if the behavior of the unemployment rate is characterized by sudden jumps and slower drops. It is argued that the framework provided in the paper can also be used to test other sample path properties of economic time series.