The NBER considers employment and incomes as the two primary indications of economic cycles. Contrary to conventional thought, a recession is never defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. In issuing its November 2001 declaration for a cycle peak dated to March 2001, for example, the NBER said, “A recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the [...]
The biggest avowed critique of the current method of estimating changes in economic accounts is the inability of statistical techniques to anticipate trend changes, or inflections. This gets back to the basics of statistical analysis as it relates to “seasonal” adjustments that are really driven by “trend-cycle” analysis. Until the NBER declares a recession, or more specifically a “cyclical peak”, [...]
The various government agencies tasked with estimating and calculating economic parameters and accounts perform regular benchmark revisions. The scale of revisions depend on many factors, not the least of which is the NBER’s “official” determination of the exact place in the “cycle” the economy exists in any discrete period of time. However, these accounts and estimations also are subjected to [...]
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