Data and Code for: Business Cycle Anatomy

We propose a new strategy for dissecting the macroeconomic time series, provide a template for the business-cycle propagation mech- anism that best describes the data, and use its properties to ap- praise models of both the parsimonious and the medium-scale va- riety. Our findings support the existence of a main business-cycle driver but rule out the following candidates for this role: technology or other shocks that map to TFP movements; news about future productivity; and inflationary demand shocks of the textbook type. Models aimed at accommodating demand-driven cycles without a strict reliance on nominal rigidity appear promising.