Historical Behaviour of The Business Cycle in India: Some Stylized Facts for 1951-1985

In this paper, we investigate some of the stylized facts about the business cycle in India over the period 1951-52 to 1985-86. The business cycle is identified with Hodrick-Prescott filtered data. In all, sixty-four different time series are detrended and their historical time paths and comovements with other time series are described. Some business cycle regularities in respect of these features are documented. It is suggested that such stylized facts should form the basis of dynamic general equilibrium modelling of the business cycle.