Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Definitions: recession, depression (revised rev 1)

Now that I have a definition for double-dip recession, I suppose I need to give my definition for recession. I did poke around and read what the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) has to say on the matter, and ultimately synthesized my own streamlined but reasonably accurate definition:

recession - an extended period, typically of at least six months and measured in months, during which economic activity is declining significantly and broadly in terms of GDP, income, production, and employment, measured from the peak of activity until the trough of activity when recovery begins, although employment tends to lag somewhat in the recovery and unemployment may remain elevated well into the recovery.

And my definition for depression:

depression - an extended period of depressed economic activity, typically a number of years, and consisting of at least one and maybe two or more recessions, during which one or more of GDP, output, income, or employment, especially the latter, fail to rise above their level at the beginning of the period, even if GDP or output do recover fully much earlier in the period. The Great Depression of the 1930's contained two distinct recessions with significant recoveries of GDP and output after each, but with an ongoing very high level of unemployment and loss of income.

-- Jack Krupansky

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