Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T13:48:16.711Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remeasuring Business Cycles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Christina D. Romer
Christina D. Romer
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article evaluates the consistency of the NBER business cycle reference dates. It finds that the early reference dates are derived from detrended data, whereas the dates after 1927 are derived from data in levels. To evaluate the importance of this and other changes in technique, I derive a simple algorithm that matches the postwar NBER peaks and troughs closely. When this algorithm is applied to data for 1884 to 1940, the new prewar dates differ systematically from the NBER dates and challenge the conventional view that recessions have gotten shorter over time.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 573 - 609
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abramovitz, Moses, Inventories and Business Cycles (New York, 1950).Google Scholar
Axe, Emerson Wirt, and Houghton, Ruth, “Financial and Business Cycles, Manufacturing Growth, and Analysis of Individual Industries, 1883–1930,” The Annalist, 37 (01 16, 1931), pp. 94–98 and 150–51.Google Scholar
Ayres, Leonard P., Turning Points in Business Cycles (New York, 1939).Google Scholar
Bradstreet's: A Journal of Trade, Finance and Public Economy (various issues).Google Scholar
Bry, Gerhard, and Boschan, Charlotte, Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs (New York, 1971).Google Scholar
Burns, Arthur F., ed., Wesley Clair Mitchell: The Economic Scientist (New York, 1952).Google Scholar
Burns, Arthur F., and Mitchell, Wesley C., Measuring Business Cycles (New York, 1946).Google Scholar
Cloos, George W., “How Good Are the National Bureau's Reference Dates?” Journal of Business, 36 (01 1963), pp. 14–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Long, J. Bradford, and Summers, Lawrence H., “The Changing Cyclical Variability of Economic Activity in the United States,” in Gordon, R. J., ed., The American Business Cycle (Chicago, 1986), pp. 679–734.Google Scholar
Diebold, Francis X., and Rudebusch, Glenn D., “Have Postwar Economic Fluctuations Been Stabilized?” American Economic Review, 82 (09 1992), pp. 993–1005.Google Scholar
Dun's Review: A Journal of Finance and Trade-Domestic and Foreign (various issues).Google Scholar
Fels, Rendig, American Business Cycles, 1865–1897 (Chapel Hill, 1959).Google Scholar
The Financial Review (various issues).Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton, and Schwartz, Anna J., A Monetary History of the United States (Princeton, 1963).Google Scholar
Grossman, Richard, “The Macroeconomic Consequences of Bank Failures Under the National Banking System,” Explorations in Economic History, 30 (07 1993), pp. 294–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hultgren, Thor, Costs, Prices, and Profits: Their Cyclical Relations (New York, 1965).Google Scholar
Kuznets, Simon, “Comment on ‘Historical Approach to the Analysis of Business Cycles’ by Joseph A. Schumpeter,” in Anderson, M., ed., Conference on Business Cycles (New York, 1951), pp. 155–62.Google Scholar
Miron, Jeffrey A., and Romer, Christina D., “A New Monthly Index of Industrial Production, 1884–1940,” this Journal, 50 (06 1990), pp. 321–32.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C., Business Cycles, Memoirs of the University of California (Berkeley, 1913), vol. 3.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C., Business Cycles: The Problem and Its Setting (New York, 1927).Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C., “Testing Business Cycles,” News-Bulletin of the NBER, No. 31 (03 1, 1929), pp. 1–8.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C., “A Review,” in Recent Economic Changes in the United States, Report of the Committee on Recent Economic Changes of the President's Conference on Unemployment (New York, 1929), vol. 2, pp. 841–910.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C., “Business Cycles,” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1930), vol. 3, pp. 92–107.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C., assisted by Burns, Arthur F., A Preliminary Draft of Chapters I, II, and III of Business Cycles, Volume II, Analysis of Cyclical Behavior (Unpublished manuscript, circa 1937).Google Scholar
Moore, Geoffrey H., “What is a Recession?” in Moore, G. H., ed., Business Cycles, Inflation, and Forecasting (Cambridge, MA., 1983), pp. 3–9.Google Scholar
Moore, Geoffrey H., and Zarnowitz, Victor, “The Development and Role of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Chronologies,” in Gordon, R. J., ed., The American Business Cycle (Chicago, 1986), pp. 735–79.Google Scholar
National Bureau of Economic Research, News-Bulletin (various issues).Google Scholar
Persons, Warren M., Forecasting Business Cycles (New York, 1931).Google Scholar
Romer, Christina D., “The Prewar Business Cycle Reconsidered: New Estimates of Gross National Product, 1869–1908,” Journal of Political Economy, 97 (02 1989), pp. 1–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, M. C., “The Statistical Control of Business Activities,” Harvard Business Review, 1 (01 1923), pp. 154–66.Google Scholar
Sachs, Jeffrey, “The Changing Cyclical Behavior of Wages and Prices, 1890–1976,” American Economic Review, 70 (03 1980), pp. 78–90.Google Scholar
Sichel, Daniel, “Inventories and the Three Phases of the Business Cycle,” (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Working Paper, 1992).Google Scholar
Snyder, Carl, Business Cycles and Business Measurements (New York, 1927).Google Scholar
Thorp, Willard Long, Business Annals, with an introductory chapter by Mitchell, Wesley C. (New York, 1926).Google Scholar
Trueblood, Lorman C., “The Dating of Postwar Business Cycles,” Proceedings of the Business and Economic Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association, 1961, pp. 16–26.Google Scholar
U.S. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Bulletin, 17 (01 1931).Google Scholar
U.S. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “New Federal Reserve Index of Industrial Production,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, 26 (08 1940), pp. 753–69.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, The National Income and Product Accounts of the United States, 1929–1982 (Washington, DC, 1986).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC, 1975).Google Scholar
Watson, Mark W., “Business Cycle Durations and Postwar Stabilization of the U.S. Economy” (NBER Working Paper No. 4005, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zarnowitz, Victor, “Business Cycles and Growth: Some Reflections and Measures,” in Muckl, W. J. and Ott, A. E., eds., Wirtschaftstheorie und Wirtschaftspolitik: Gedenschrift für Erich Preiser (Passau, 1981), pp. 475–508.Google Scholar
Zarnowitz, Victor, and Moore, Geoffrey H., “The Timing and Severity of the 1980 Recession,” in Moore, G. H., ed., Business Cycles, Inflation, and Forecasting (Cambridge, MA, 1983), pp. 11–17.Google Scholar