Abstract: Because there is no unified standard to choose related financial variables in measuring financial cycle, according to the characteristics that financial variables are the leading indicators of business cycle and can predict the economic recession, this paper builds multiple financial cycle indexes, tests the ability of financial cycle indexes to predict economic recession by receiver operating characteristic curve, and then chooses the best financial cycle index. We find the best method is to measure credit scale by the credit provided by banks to the private non-financial sector, and estimate the dynamic factors by using credit, credit / GDP, housing price and stock price. The empirical analysis using TVP-SV-VAR model shows that, the impact on business cycle of positive financial cycle shock has obvious hump line characteristics and there is no significant time-varying effect; the impact on financial cycle of positive business cycle shock has obvious U-shaped curve characteristics and there is a significant time-varying effect; the impact on financial cycle of positive business cycle shock in the COVID-19 period is significantly different compared with other periods; the impact on business cycle of monetary policy shock gradually increases with the increase of the number of lag periods and is very lasting, and the impact on the financial cycle of it will peak very quickly and begin to weaken.

Key words: financial cycle, business cycle, receiver operating characteristic curve, TVP-SV-VAR