IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/40271.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sunspots, unemployment, and recessions, or Can the solar activity cycle shape the business cycle?

Author

Listed:
  • Gorbanev, Mikhail

Abstract

Over the last 77 years (from 1935), all 7 cyclical maximums of the solar activity overlapped closely with the US recessions, thus predicting (or triggering?) 8 out of 13 recessions officially identified by NBER (including one “double-deep” recession). Over the last 64 years (from 1948), all 6 maximums of the solar activity were preceded by minimums of the US unemployment rate, and the spikes in the unemployment rate followed with lags of 2-3 years. On the world scale, over the last 44 years (for which the data is available), all 4 maximums of the solar activity overlapped with minimums of the unemployment rate in the G7 countries, followed by its spikes within 2-3 years. From 1965, when consistent recession dating is available for all G7 countries, nearly 3/5 of the recessions started in the 3 years around and after the sunspot maximums. Was it a mere coincidence or a part of a broader pattern? This paper explores the correlation between the solar activity cycles (as measured by the number of sunspots on the sun surface) and the timing of recessions in the US and other economies. It finds out that the probability of recessions in G7 countries greatly increased around and after the solar maximums, suggesting that they can cause deterioration in business conditions and trigger recessions. This opens new approach for projecting recessions, which can be applied and tested with regard to the next solar maximum in 2013. Caution: This research is not in the “mainstream” of the economic thought. Read at your own risk!

Suggested Citation

  • Gorbanev, Mikhail, 2012. "Sunspots, unemployment, and recessions, or Can the solar activity cycle shape the business cycle?," MPRA Paper 40271, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:40271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/40271/1/MPRA_paper_40271.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carlos Garcia-Mata & Felix I. Shaffner, 1934. "Solar and Economic Relationships: A Preliminary Report," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 49(1), pages 1-51.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gorbanev, Mikhail, 2020. "Shifting Pattern of Extraordinary Economic and Social Events in Relation to the Solar Cycle," MPRA Paper 102163, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Gorbanev, Mikhail, 2015. "Can solar activity influence the occurrence of economic recessions?," MPRA Paper 65502, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Burakov, D., 2017. "Do Sunspots Matter for Cycles in Agricultural Lending: a VEC Approach to Russian Wheat Market," AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Economics and Management, vol. 9(1), March.

    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. Danny García Callejas, 2007. "Biology and Economics: Metaphors that Economists usually take from Biology," Revista Ecos de Economía, Universidad EAFIT, March.
    2. Robert W. Dimand, 2020. "Macroeconomic dynamics at the Cowles Commission from the 1930s to the 1950s," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 564-581, July.
    3. Wang, Hanjie & Feil, Jan-Henning & Yu, Xiaohua, 2021. "Disagreement on sunspots and soybeans futures price," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 385-393.
    4. Christopher K. Manner, 2016. "A Review of Pre-Keynesian Neoclassical Business Cycle Theory," Journal of Commerce and Trade, Society for Advanced Management Studies, vol. 11(1), pages 7-15, April.
    5. Berislav Žmuk & Hrvoje Jošić, 2023. "Investigation Of The Sunspots And Gdp Nexus: The Case Of Balkan Countries," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 68(237), pages 69-95, April – J.
    6. Gorbanev, Mikhail, 2015. "Can solar activity influence the occurrence of economic recessions?," MPRA Paper 65502, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment; recession; business cycle; sunspot; solar cycle;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:pra:mprapa:40271. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.