The boosted Hodrick‐Prescott filter is more general than you might think

Abstract

SummaryThe global financial crisis and Covid‐19 recession have renewed discussion concerning trend‐cycle discovery in macroeconomic data, and boosting has recently upgraded the popular Hodrick‐Prescott filter to a modern machine learning device suited to data‐rich and rapid computational environments. This paper extends boosting's trend determination capability to higher order integrated processes and time series with roots that are local to unity. The theory is established by understanding the asymptotic effect of boosting on a simple exponential function. Given a universe of time series in FRED databases that exhibit various dynamic patterns, boosting timely captures downturns at crises and recoveries that follow.