Graphs that allow side by side comparisons of the six longer US expansions since 1950 suggest that these expansions have four distinct phases: (1) a high growth recovery during which the rate of unemployment declines to its pre-recession level, (2) a modest growth plateau during which the rate...

This paper provides the first comprehensive econometric analysis of the causes of bank distress during the Depression. We assemble bank-level data for virtually all Fed member banks, and combine those data with county-level, state-level, and national-level economic characteristics to capture...

This paper examines the empirical relationship in the postwar United States between the aggregate business cycle and various aspects of the macroeconomy, such as production, interest rates, prices, productivity, sectoral employment, investment, income, and consumption. This is done by examining...

We examine whether the aggregate U.S. business cycle is driven mainly by geographical" shocks (affecting all sectors within a state), or by sectoral shocks (affecting the same sector in all" states). We find that, at the level of an individual sector in an individual state growth are driven by...

This article examines the performance of various financial variables as predictors of subsequent U.S. recessions. Series such as interest rates and spreads, stock prices, currencies, and monetary aggregates are evaluated singly and in comparison with other financial and non-financial indicators....

The average length of business cycle contractions in the United States fell from 20.5 months in the prewar period to 10.7 months in the postwar period. Similarly, the average length of business cycle expansions rose from 25.3 months in the prewar period to 49.9 months in the postwar period. This...

The conventional wisdom that nominal wages became less sensitive to the business cycle and more autocorrelated after World War II is reexamined here by considering whether these properties are artifacts of the methods used to construct prewar wage series. A replication based on these methods is...

This paper compares the cyclical and secular behavior of Japanese and U.S. inventories at the aggregate and sectoral level, 1967-1987. While, as is well known, U.S. inventories are sharply procyclical, Japanese inventories are only mildly procyclical. In neither country do inventory and sales...

Each of the main explanations of procyclical labor productivity, or short-run increasing returns to labor (SRIRL), is closely associated with a competing theory of the business cycle: Real business cycle theorists attribute SRIRL to procyclical technological shocks, proponents of recent theories...

This paper examines the seasonal cycle in the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy. we present estimates of the seasonal patterns in monthly data for 2-digit industries, and we demonstrate the similarity of the seasonal cycle and the business cycle in manufacturing with respect to several...