Business Cycles within the Dutch Floriculture Industry

The Dutch floricultural industry, similar to the aggregate economy, relies on (re)exporting activities and represents the trading ‘hub’ within Europe. Based on this notion, the thesis examines whether business cycle(s) are detectable within the Dutch floriculture and subsequently if the structure is comparable with the Dutch business cycle. Using an autoregressive model with harmonic regressors, for both time series, business cycles are detected. The business cycles of both categories match. Interestingly, the business cycle structure clusters around the start of the Fibonacci sequence 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8 years. Finally, based on these findings, out-of-sample forecasts are generated for the Dutch floricultural industry till 2020.