A systematic literature review on business cycle approaches: Measurement, nature, duration

Research background: The business cycle (BC) approaches have found extensive use in economic analysis and forecasting. Especially in the last 40 years, various modern BC models have been proposed and have experienced rapid development. However, there are no recent studies that provide a systematic review of the publications on this topic. Purpose of the article: This paper aims to comprehensively review publications of BC approaches based on the cause, nature and methods of measurement BC, with the goal of identifying the current research states, research gaps and future trends of BC approaches. Methods: A systematic literature review of BC approaches is conducted by qualitatively introducing the cause and the nature of BCs and quantitatively analyzing the methods of measurement BCs.  We selected 206 articles related to BC approaches from the WoS Core Collection and Google Scholar database, spanning the years 1946 to 2022, for comprehensive statistical and content analysis. The statistical analysis presents the distribution of publication years, the most popular journals and the highly cited publications. The content analysis classifies the selected publications into 6 categories based on methods of measurement BCs, and the theory, technique and applications of each category are analyzed in detail. Findings & value added: The analysis results indicate that BC approaches have progressively evolved in sophistication and have found widespread application in decomposing trends within economic time series, quantifying the nature of business cycles, and elucidating the causes and transmission mechanisms underlying them. This review paper provides current states, research challenges and future directions in effectively employing BC approaches for empirical study.