The Classification of Economic Activity

Travis John Berge () and Oscar Jorda ()

Working Papers from University of California at Davis, Department of Economics

Abstract: The Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) of the National Bureau of Economic Research provides a historical chronology of business cycle turning points. This paper investigates three central aspects about this chronology: (1) How skillful is the BCDC in classifying economic activity into expansions and recessions? (2) Which indices of business conditions best capture the current but unobservable state of the business cycle? And (3) Which indicators predict future turning points best and at what horizons? We answer each of these questions in detail with methods novel to economics designed to assess classification ability. In the process we clarify several important features of business cycle phenomena.

JEL-codes: C14 E32 E37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cba and nep-hpe
Date: 2009-12
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:ucdeco:09-18

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