IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cda/wpaper/308.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Classification of Economic Activity into Expansions and Recessions

Author

Listed:
  • Oscar Jorda
  • Travis Berge

    (Department of Economics, University of California Davis)

Abstract

The Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) of the National Bureau of Economic Research provides a historical chronology of business cycle turning points. This paper investigates three central aspects about this chronology: (1) How skillful is the BCDC in classifying economic activity into expansions and recessions? (2) Which indices of business conditions best capture the current but unobservable state of the business cycle? And (3) Which indicators predict future turning points best and at what horizons? We answer each of these questions in detail with methods novel to economics designed to assess classification ability. In the process we clarify several important features of business cycle phenomena.

Suggested Citation

  • Oscar Jorda & Travis Berge, 2009. "The Classification of Economic Activity into Expansions and Recessions," Working Papers 308, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:308
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/nJrhx3LHH4z2T3EuCU2QMKk1/09-18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcelle Chauvet & James D. Hamilton, 2006. "Dating Business Cycle Turning Points," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Nonlinear Time Series Analysis of Business Cycles, pages 1-54, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    2. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    3. Rudebusch, Glenn D. & Williams, John C., 2009. "Forecasting Recessions: The Puzzle of the Enduring Power of the Yield Curve," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 492-503.
    4. Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell, 1946. "Measuring Business Cycles," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number burn46-1.
    5. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dagum, Estela Bee, 2010. "Business Cycles and Current Economic Analysis/Los ciclos económicos y el análisis económico actual," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 28, pages 577-594, Diciembre.
    2. McKay, Alisdair & Reis, Ricardo, 2008. "The brevity and violence of contractions and expansions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 738-751, May.
    3. Travis J. Berge & Òscar Jordà, 2011. "Evaluating the Classification of Economic Activity into Recessions and Expansions," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 246-277, April.
    4. Marcelle Chauvet & Rafael R. S. Guimaraes, 2021. "Transfer Learning for Business Cycle Identification," Working Papers Series 545, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    5. Rafael R. S. Guimaraes, 2022. "Deep Learning Macroeconomics," Papers 2201.13380, arXiv.org.
    6. Alexandre Bonnet R. Costa & Pedro Cavalcanti G. Ferreira & Wagner Piazza Gaglianone & Osmani Teixeira C. Guillén & João Victor Issler & Artur Brasil Fialho Rodrigues, 2023. "Predicting Recessions in (almost) Real Time in a Big-data Setting," Working Papers Series 587, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    7. Perron, Pierre & Wada, Tatsuma, 2016. "Measuring business cycles with structural breaks and outliers: Applications to international data," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 281-303.
    8. Siem Jan Koopman & Joao Valle e Azevedo, 2003. "Measuring Synchronisation and Convergence of Business Cycles," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-052/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    9. Marcelle Chauvet & Jeremy Piger, 2013. "Employment And The Business Cycle," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 81, pages 16-42, October.
    10. Siem Jan Koopman & Soon Yip Wong, 2006. "Extracting Business Cycles using Semi-parametric Time-varying Spectra with Applications to US Macroeconomic Time Series," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 06-105/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    11. Silvia Palasca & Elisabeta Jaba, 2014. "Leading and Lagging Indicators Of the Economic Crisis," Romanian Statistical Review, Romanian Statistical Review, vol. 62(3), pages 31-47, September.
    12. Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2011. "Identification of Slowdowns and Accelerations for the Euro Area Economy," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 73(3), pages 335-364, June.
    13. Sumru Altug & Bilin Neyapti & Mustafa Emin, 2012. "Institutions and Business Cycles," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 347-366, December.
    14. L.A. Gil-Alana, 2005. "Fractional Cyclical Structures & Business Cycles in the Specification of the US Real Output," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(1-2), pages 99-126.
    15. Fabrizio Carmignani, 2010. "Endogenous Optimal Currency Areas: the Case of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 19(1), pages 25-51, January.
    16. Guglielmo Caporale & Luis Gil-Alana, 2006. "Long memory at the long run and at the cyclical frequencies: modelling real wages in England, 1260–1994," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 83-93, March.
    17. Ai Deng & Pierre Perron, 2006. "A comparison of alternative asymptotic frameworks to analyse a structural change in a linear time trend," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 9(3), pages 423-447, November.
    18. Maria Gadea & Ana Gómez-Loscos & Antonio Montañés, 2012. "Cycles inside cycles: Spanish regional aggregation," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 423-456, December.
    19. Wolfgang Nierhaus & Timo Wollmershäuser, 2016. "ifo Konjunkturumfragen und Konjunkturanalyse: Band II," ifo Forschungsberichte, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 72.
    20. Perron, Pierre & Wada, Tatsuma, 2009. "Let's take a break: Trends and cycles in US real GDP," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 749-765, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:308. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Letters and Science IT Services Unit (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.