NBER Prog. on Economic Fluctuations and Growth

I ran across work done at the National Bureau of Economic Research’s program on economic fluctuations and growth (www.nber.org/programs/efg/). The bureau is the nonpartisan, nonprofit institute whose macroeconomists conduct their own research and ascertain the timing of the nation’s booms and recessions. There are 177 current members from academia (primarily, i believe). Their recent report on the current business cycle was notable for its comparison to current post-recession gdp performance vis-a-vis average for previous 6 recessions.


Quarterly Real GDP: The dark line shows the movement of quarterly real GDP in 2000-2003 and the shaded line the average over the previous 6 recessions. Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce (www.bea.doc.gov).

The current recovery has not seen as high a growth rate of real GDP as in the average recovery. In addition, productivity has grown unusually rapidly during the recession and recovery. As a result, employment has continued to decline slightly during the recovery. In dating the trough, the committee relied on the tradition of the Bureau's business-cycle dating procedure that emphasized output as the measure of economic activity, rather than employment.