Dating the Indian Business Cycle: Is Output All That Counts?

Allan P. Layton and Anirvan Banerji ()
Additional contact information
Allan P. Layton: Queensland University of Technology

Indian Economic Review, 2001, vol. 36, issue 1, 231-240

Abstract: Since 1996, the Central Statistical Organisation has been publishing a quarterly series for GDP. Given that such a broad measure of economic output is now available on a quarterly basis for India, one may ask whether this series alone should now be all that is needed to date the Indian business cycle. We argue strongly against this. To do so, in our view, would be at odds with what is meant by the notion of “the business cycle” as conceived by the original architects of the concept at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In arriving at a proper business cycle chronology it is of course crucial to have first a clear understanding of what properly constitutes the business cycle. This paper will argue that, in addition to an output dimension, there are other important dimensions to aggregate economic activity, which must be considered in determining a chronology for the business cycle. This view is in contrast to those who argue that GDP is all that is needed to represent a country’s business cycle. Of course, our view also implies that basing the Indian business cycle chronology just on industrial production, a much narrower monthly measure of output, is even less appropriate.

JEL-codes: E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dse:indecr:v:36:y:2001:i:1:p:231-240

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.ierdse.org/

Access Statistics for this article

Indian Economic Review is currently edited by Pami Dua (Editor) & Ram Singh (Associate Editor) and Sunil Kanwar

More articles in Indian Economic Review from Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics University of Delhi, Delhi 110 007. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pami Dua ().