We estimate output growth rate spectra for 58 countries. The spectra exhibit diverse shapes. To study the sources of this diversity, we estimate the short-run, business cycle, and long-run frequency components of the sampled series. For most OECD countries the bulk of the spectral mass is in the...

In a classical article, Granger (1966) argued that the levels of most economic time series have spectra that exhibit a smooth declining shape with considerable power at very low frequencies. He termed it "the typical spectral shape of an economic variable." Granger's assertion has not been...