Bussines Cycles in Latin America

We have analyzed the business cycles for a sample of Latin-American countries in order to understand labor market consequences of economic downturns. Using real GDP as a proxy of economic activity we identified its cyclical component using the Baxter-King filter. For Argentina, Brazil and México we analyzed the longest period with available data up to date. Next graphs show the business cycles for the three countries. The results indentify a turning point in GDP between the last quarter of 2007 and the second of 2008 that account for the current economic downturn.