IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lec/leecon/09-22.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decision Making in hard Times: What is a Recession, Why Do We Care and How Do We Know When We Are in One?

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin Lee
  • Anthony Garratt
  • Kalvinder Shields

Abstract

Defining a recessionary event as one which impacts adversely on individuals’ economic well-being, the paper argues that recession is a multi-faceted phenomenon whose meaning differs from person to person as it impacts on their decision-making in real time. It argues that recession is best represented through the calculation of the nowcast of recession event probabilities. A variety of such probabilities are produced using a real-time data set for the US for the period, focusing on the likelihood of various recessionary events through 1986q1-2008q4 and on prospects beyond the end of the sample.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Lee & Anthony Garratt & Kalvinder Shields, 2009. "Decision Making in hard Times: What is a Recession, Why Do We Care and How Do We Know When We Are in One?," Discussion Papers in Economics 09/22, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    • Handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:09/22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp09-22.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, November.
    2. Kevin Lee & Nilss Olekalns & Kalvinder Shields, 2008. "Nowcasting, Business Cycle Dating and the Interpretation of New Information when Real Time Data are Available," Discussion Papers in Economics 08/17, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    3. Beaudry, Paul & Koop, Gary, 1993. "Do recessions permanently change output?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 149-163, April.
    4. Adrian Pagan & Don Harding, 2005. "A suggested framework for classifying the modes of cycle research," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(2), pages 151-159.
    5. Garrat, A. & Lee, K. & Pesaran, M.H. & Shin, Y., 2000. "Forecast Uncertainties in Macroeconometric Modelling: An Application to the UK Economy," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0004, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    6. Dick van Dijk & Herman K. van Dijk & Philip Hans Franses, 2005. "On the dynamics of business cycle analysis: editors' introduction," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(2), pages 147-150.
    7. Pesaran, M Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 1992. "A Simple Nonparametric Test of Predictive Performance," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(4), pages 561-565, October.
    8. Garratt, Anthony & Lee, Kevin & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol, 2012. "Global and National Macroeconometric Modelling: A Long-Run Structural Approach," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199650460, Decembrie.
    9. Diebold, Francis X & Gunther, Todd A & Tay, Anthony S, 1998. "Evaluating Density Forecasts with Applications to Financial Risk Management," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 863-883, November.
    10. Anthony Garratt & Kevin Lee & Emi Mise & Kalvinder Shields, 2008. "Real-Time Representations of the Output Gap," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 792-804, November.
    11. Aruoba, S. BoraÄŸan & Diebold, Francis X. & Scotti, Chiara, 2009. "Real-Time Measurement of Business Conditions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 417-427.
    12. Michael Woodford, 2001. "The Taylor Rule and Optimal Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 232-237, May.
    13. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    14. Garratt, Anthony & Lee, Kevin & Mise, Emi & Shields, Kalvinder, 2009. "Real time representation of the UK output gap in the presence of model uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 81-102.
    15. Harding, Don & Pagan, Adrian, 2006. "Synchronization of cycles," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 59-79, May.
    16. Marcelle Chauvet & Jeremy M. Piger, 2003. "Identifying business cycle turning points in real time," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 85(Mar), pages 47-61.
    17. Orphanides, Athanasios & Porter, Richard D. & Reifschneider, David & Tetlow, Robert & Finan, Frederico, 2000. "Errors in the measurement of the output gap and the design of monetary policy," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 117-141.
    18. Harding, Don & Pagan, Adrian, 2002. "Dissecting the cycle: a methodological investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 365-381, March.
    19. Edward E. Leamer, 2008. "What's a Recession, Anyway?," NBER Working Papers 14221, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Anthony Garratt & Kevin Lee, 2006. "Investing Under Model Uncertainty: Decision Based Evaluation of Exchange Rate and Interest Rate Forecasts in the US, UK and Japan," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0616, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    21. Francis X. Diebold & Jinyong Hahn & Anthony S. Tay, 1999. "Multivariate Density Forecast Evaluation And Calibration In Financial Risk Management: High-Frequency Returns On Foreign Exchange," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 661-673, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Garratt, Anthony & Lee, Kevin & Shields, Kalvinder, 2016. "Forecasting global recessions in a GVAR model of actual and expected output," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 374-390.
    2. Maymin, Philip, 2012. "Music and the market: Song and stock volatility," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 70-85.
    3. Anthony Garratt & Kevin Lee & Kalvinder Shields, 2014. "Forecasting Global Recessions in a GVAR Model of Actual and Expected Output in the G7," Discussion Papers 2014/06, University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM).
    4. Hsu, Jason C., 2012. "What drives equity market non-participation?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 86-114.
    5. Kneipp, Shawn M. & Kairalla, John A. & Sheely, Amanda L., 2013. "A randomized controlled trial to improve health among women receiving welfare in the U.S.: The relationship between employment outcomes and the economic recession," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 130-140.
    6. Kevin Lee & Nilss Olekalns & Kalvinder Shields & Zheng Wang, 2012. "Australian Real-Time Database: An Overview and an Illustration of its Use in Business Cycle Analysis," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(283), pages 495-516, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kevin Lee & James Morley & Kalvinder Shields, 2015. "The Meta Taylor Rule," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(1), pages 73-98, February.
    2. Clements, Michael P. & Franses, Philip Hans & Swanson, Norman R., 2004. "Forecasting economic and financial time-series with non-linear models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 169-183.
    3. Garratt, Anthony & Lee, Kevin & Mise, Emi & Shields, Kalvinder, 2009. "Real time representation of the UK output gap in the presence of model uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 81-102.
    4. Nilss Olekalns & Kalvinder Shields, 2008. "Nowcasting, Business Cycle Dating and the Interpretation of New Information when Real Time Data are Available," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1040, The University of Melbourne.
    5. Owyang, Michael T. & Piger, Jeremy & Wall, Howard J., 2013. "Discordant city employment cycles," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 367-384.
    6. Grigoraş, Veaceslav & Stanciu, Irina Eusignia, 2016. "New evidence on the (de)synchronisation of business cycles: Reshaping the European business cycle," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 27-52.
    7. Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2011. "Identification of Slowdowns and Accelerations for the Euro Area Economy," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 73(3), pages 335-364, June.
    8. Garratt, Anthony & Lee, Kevin & Shields, Kalvinder, 2016. "Forecasting global recessions in a GVAR model of actual and expected output," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 374-390.
    9. Sumru Altug & Bilin Neyapti & Mustafa Emin, 2012. "Institutions and Business Cycles," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 347-366, December.
    10. Anthony Garratt & Kevin Lee & Kalvinder Shields, 2018. "The role of uncertainty, sentiment and cross‐country interactions in G7 output dynamics," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 391-418, May.
    11. Garratt, Anthony & Mitchell, James & Vahey, Shaun P., 2014. "Measuring output gap nowcast uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 268-279.
    12. James Morley & Jeremy Piger, 2006. "The Importance of Nonlinearity in Reproducing Business Cycle Features," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Nonlinear Time Series Analysis of Business Cycles, pages 75-95, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    13. Yasutomo Murasawa, 2014. "Measuring the natural rates, gaps, and deviation cycles," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 495-522, September.
    14. Altug, Sumru & Bildirici, Melike, 2010. "Business Cycles around the Globe: A Regime-switching Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 7968, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Viv B. Hall & C. John McDermott, 2006. "The New Zealand Business Cycle: Return To Golden Days?," CAMA Working Papers 2006-21, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    16. Chauvet, Marcelle & Potter, Simon, 2013. "Forecasting Output," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 141-194, Elsevier.
    17. Don Harding & Adrian Pagan, 2006. "Measurement of Business Cycles," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 966, The University of Melbourne.
    18. Anthony Garratt & Kevin Lee & Emi Mise & Kalvinder Shields, 2006. "Real Time Representation of the UK Output Gap in the Presence of Trend Uncertainty," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0618, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    19. Carlos Medel, 2017. "Forecasting Chilean inflation with the hybrid new keynesian Phillips curve: globalisation, combination, and accuracy," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 20(3), pages 004-050, December.
    20. M. Hashem Pesaran & Paolo Zaffaroni, 2004. "Model Averaging and Value-at-Risk Based Evaluation of Large Multi Asset Volatility Models for Risk Management," CESifo Working Paper Series 1358, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Recession; Probability Forecasts; Real Time;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:09/22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Abbie Sleath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deleiuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.