Using the recession recovery point equal to the month when private payrolls first exceeded their previous peak level, this paper argues that it was the negative secular trend in manufacturing jobs that was the most important determinant of the length and depth of the last three...

The relevance of imperfect competition for models of aggregate economic fluctuations has received increased attention from researchers in both macroeconomics and industrial organization. Measuring properly the size of industry markups of price over marginal cost is important both for assessing...

The reawakening of interest in links between price flexibility and fluctuations in economic activity calls for a reconsideration of models of price and quantity adjustment. We examine relationships between credit disturbances and real activity under flexible prices, using monthly data on real...

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 proposes a new way of displaying and analyzing macroeconomic time series to form recession forecasts. The proposed data displays contain the last three years of each expansion. These allow observers to see for themselves what is different about the last year before recession. Based on...