In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction that occurs when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending. This may be triggered by various events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock, the bursting of an economic bubble, or a large-scale anthropogenic or natural disaster.
An economic depression is a period of carried long-term economic downturn that is the result of lowered economic activity in one major or more national economies. Economic depression maybe related to one specific country where there is some economic crisis that has worsened but most often reflexes historically the American Great Depression and similar economic status that may be recognized as existing at some country, several countries or even in many countries. It is often understood in economics that economic crisis and the following recession that maybe named economic depression are part of economic cycles where the slowdown of the economy follows the economic growth and vice versa. It is a result of more severe economic problems or a downturn than the recession itself, which is a slowdown in economic activity over the course of the normal business cycle of growing economy.
Business cycles are intervals of general expansion followed by recession in economic performance. The changes in economic activity that characterize business cycles have important implications for the welfare of the general population, government institutions, and private sector firms. There are numerous specific definitions of what constitutes a business cycle. The simplest and most naïve characterization comes from regarding recessions as 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. More satisfactory classifications are provided by, first including more economic indicators and second by looking for more informative data patterns than the ad hoc 2 quarter definition.
Simon Smith Kuznets was a Russian-born American economist and statistician who received the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development."
Martin Stuart Feldstein was an American economist. He was the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He served as president and chief executive officer of the NBER from 1978 to 2008. From 1982 to 1984, Feldstein served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Feldstein was also a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body the Group of Thirty from 2003.
Arthur Frank Burns was an American economist and diplomat who served as the 10th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978. He previously chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1956, and served as the first Counselor to the President under Richard Nixon from January to November 1969. He also taught and researched at Rutgers University, Columbia University, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The early 2000s recession was a decline in economic activity which mainly occurred in developed countries. The recession affected the European Union during 2000 and 2001 and the United States from March to November 2001. The UK, Canada and Australia avoided the recession, while Russia, a nation that did not experience prosperity during the 1990s, began to recover from it. Japan's 1990s recession continued.
Procyclical and countercyclical variables are variables that fluctuate in a way that is positively or negatively correlated with business cycle fluctuations in gross domestic product (GDP). The scope of the concept may differ between the context of macroeconomic theory and that of economic policy–making.
Robert Ernest "Bob" Hall is an American economist who serves as a professor of economics at Stanford University, and as the Robert and Carole McNeil Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is generally considered a macroeconomist, but he describes himself as an applied economist.
The reference dates of the United States' business cycles are determined by the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which looks at various coincident indicators such as real GDP, real personal income, employment, and sales to make informative judgments on when to set the historical dates of the peaks and troughs of past business cycles. The NBER was founded in 1920, and the first business cycle dates published in 1929.
The American subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. The crisis led to a severe economic recession, with millions of people losing their jobs and many businesses going bankrupt. The U.S. government intervened with a series of measures to stabilize the financial system, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 is a book written in 1963 by Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz. It uses historical time series and economic analysis to argue the then-novel proposition that changes in the money supply profoundly influenced the U.S. economy, especially the behavior of economic fluctuations. The implication they draw is that changes in the money supply had unintended adverse effects, and that sound monetary policy is necessary for economic stability. Orthodox economic historians see it as one of the most influential economics books of the century. The chapter dealing with the causes of the Great Depression was published as a stand-alone book titled The Great Contraction, 1929–1933.
The Great Moderation is a period in the United States of America starting from the mid-1980s until at least 2007 characterized by the reduction in the volatility of business cycle fluctuations in developed nations compared with the decades before. It is believed to be caused by institutional and structural changes, particularly in central bank policies, in the second half of the twentieth century.
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline observed in national economies globally, i.e. a recession, that occurred in the late 2000s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression. One result was a serious disruption of normal international relations.
A global recession is recession that affects many countries around the world—that is, a period of global economic slowdown or declining economic output.
Christina Duckworth Romer is the Class of 1957 Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration. She resigned from her role on the Council of Economic Advisers on September 3, 2010.
The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) based in New York City, is an independent institute formed in 1996 by Geoffrey H. Moore, Anirvan Banerji, and Lakshman Achuthan. It provides economic modeling, financial databases, economic forecasting, and market cycles services to investment managers, business executives, and government policymakers.
In the United States, the Great Recession was a severe financial crisis combined with a deep recession. While the recession officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, it took many years for the economy to recover to pre-crisis levels of employment and output. This slow recovery was due in part to households and financial institutions paying off debts accumulated in the years preceding the crisis along with restrained government spending following initial stimulus efforts. It followed the bursting of the housing bubble, the housing market correction and subprime mortgage crisis.
