TY  - JOUR
AU  - Leamer,Edward E.
TI  - What's a Recession, Anyway?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14221
PY  - 2008
Y2  - August 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14221
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14221.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward E. Leamer
John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management
UCLA
Box 951481
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
Tel: 310/206-1452
Fax: 310/825-4011
E-Mail: edward.leamer@anderson.ucla.edu
AB  - Monthly US data on payroll employment, civilian employment, industrial production and the unemployment rate are used to define a recession-dating algorithm that nearly perfectly reproduces the NBER official peak and trough dates.  The only substantial point of disagreement is with respect to the NBER November 1973 peak.  The algorithm prefers September 1974.  In addition, this algorithm indicates that the data through June 2008 do not yet exceed the recession threshold, and will do so only if things get much worse.
ER  -