Predictors of a recession

In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more consecutive quarters of a year. In the US, the judgment of the business cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research concerning the exact dating of recessions is generally accepted. The NBER has a more general framework for judging recessions. A recession is an important decline in economic action spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, generally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale and retail sales. A recession begins just after the financial system reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Development is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief and they have been rare in recent decades.

A recession may occupy simultaneous declines in coincident measures of overall economic activity such as employment, investment, and corporate profits. Recessions may be linked with falling prices (deflation), or, alternatively, sharply rising prices (inflation) in a process known as stagflation. A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression. A devastating breakdown of an economy is called economic collapse. Market-oriented economies are characterized by economic driving cycles, but actual recessions do not always result in macroeconomic sub-financial declines in gross domestic product. At this time there is much debate, sometimes ideologically motivated, as to whether government intervention smoothes the cycle, exaggerates it, or even creates it. There are no totally reliable predictors. These are regarded to be possible predictors.

• Stock market drops have preceded the beginning of recessions. However about half of the drops of 10% or more since 1946 have not resulted in recessions. Also, approximately half of the stock market decline came after the beginning of recessions.
• Inverted yield curve, the model developed by Fed economist Jonathan Wright, uses yields on 10-year and three-month Treasury securities as well as the Fed's overnight funds rate. Another model developed by Federal Reserve Bank of New York economists uses only the 10-year/three-month spread. It is, however, not a definite indicator; it is sometimes followed by a recession 6 to 18 months later.
• The three-month change in the unemployment rate and initial jobless claims.
• Index of Leading Indicators.

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