During the typical recovery from U.S. post-War period economic downturns, employment recovers to its pre-recession level within months of the output trough. However, during the last two recoveries, employment has taken up to two years to achieve its pre-recession benchmark. We propose a formal...

Hamilton (2005) noted that nine of the last ten recessions in the United States were preceded by a substantial increase in the price of oil. In this paper, we consider whether oil price shocks significantly increase the probability of recessions in a number of countries. Because business cycle...

Much of the literature examining the effects of oil shocks asks the question “What is an oil shock?” and has concluded that oil-price increases are asymmetric in their effects on the US economy. That is, sharp increases in oil prices affect economic activity adversely, but sharp decreases in...

The burdens of a recession are not spread evenly across demographic groups. The public and media, for example, noticed that, from the start of the current recession in December 2007 through June 2009, men accounted for more than three quarters of net job losses. Other differences have garnered...

"This paper examines and compares the recent business cycle experiences of the seven states that lie partly or wholly within the Eighth Federal Reserve District (Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee). For the period surrounding the 1990-91 NBER recession,...