TY  - JOUR
AU  - Long,J. Bradford De
AU  - Summers,Lawrence H.
TI  - Are Business Cycles Symmetric?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1444
PY  - 1986
Y2  - November 1986
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1444
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1444.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
J. Bradford DeLong
Department of Economics
601 Evans Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/643-4027
Fax: 510/642-6615
E-Mail: delong@econ.berkeley.edu

Lawrence H. Summers
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-9322
Fax: 617/495-0436
E-Mail: lhs@harvard.edu
AB  - This note shows that contrary to widespread belief there is little evidence that the business cycle is asymmetric. Using American data for the pre- and post-war periods and data on five other major OECD nations for the post-war period, we are unable to support the hypothesis that contractions are shorter and sharper than expansions. We conclude that there is not much basis for preferring some version of traditional cyclical techniques to more modern statistical methods.
ER  -