macroeconomics, econometricsI ran across a quote in an article which claimed:
“Out of 100 years of Fed control, the country has had 22 recessional years, including one depression. The 100 years before the Fed saw 44 recessions and six depressions.”
My questions:
How are historical recessions identified without data for the statistical measures used at present (GDP, GDP growth)
Have there been any studies that have used a uniform set of statistical measures for recessions over time?
Recommendations for books or studies regarding history of recessions, preferably based on analysis of data rather than philosophical predisposition.
The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee's definition is "two consecutive quarters of decline". The link contains a good place to start.
Historical recessions are defined using historical GDP data. Since National Accounts is a relatively new institution (see the work of Kuznets), estimates of GDP fluctuations before roughly the 1930s are based on ad hoc measures. Roughly, economic historians use "value added factors" or other empirical estimation methods in a year that there are data in, e.g., cattle production and total fruit consumption and an estimate of GDP, and extrapolate it out of the sample in different years. As one can easily understand, these estimates are sometimes subjective.
A field journal, perhaps the Journal of Economic History as well as the Review of Income and Wealth would definitely contain such studies with data that spawn long periods.
One excellent source is Monetary Trends in the United States and United Kingdom: Their Relation to Income, Prices, and Interest Rates, 1867-1975, by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz. It is available online here.
This book features historical datasets, and is particularly focused on monetary trends. The data compiled for the book have also been used for many other studies on historical GNP fluctuations. If you check the citations from Google Schoolar, you can find many other studies that have addressed this field of research.
I would add:
Measuring Business Cycles
Burns, Arthur F. and Wesley C. Mitchell
ISBN: 0-870-14085-X
Business Cycles: The Problem and Its Setting
Wesley Clair Mitchell
ISBN: 0-870-14084-1
What Happens During Business Cycles: A Progress Report
Wesley Clair Mitchell
ISBN: 0-870-14088-4
Business Cycle Indicators, Vol. 1 and 2
Geoffrey H. Moore, ed.
ISBN: 0-870-14093-0
ISBN: 0-691-04109-1
All of the above, and more are at:
http://www.nber.org/booksbyseries/SBC.html
Another source is:
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/
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