IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/y2006inov24n2006-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is a recession imminent?

Author

Listed:
  • John G. Fernald
  • Bharat Trehan

Abstract

The sharp slowdown in housing and the inverted yield curve have led to concerns that the odds of a recession have risen. For instance, Dow Jones Newswire reported on November 2 that one model based on the yield curve put the probability of a recession over the next four quarters at more than 50%. This Letter presents and discusses various estimates of the probability of recession. Our review of the evidence suggests two conclusions: First, recessions appear difficult to predict; second, while the probability of a recession over the next year may now be somewhat elevated, it does not appear to be nearly as high as the yield curve suggests.

Suggested Citation

  • John G. Fernald & Bharat Trehan, 2006. "Is a recession imminent?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue nov24.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:y:2006:i:nov24:n:2006-32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2006/el2006-32.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2006/el2006-32.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Dueker, 2005. "Dynamic Forecasts of Qualitative Variables: A Qual VAR Model of U.S. Recessions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 96-104, January.
    2. Alan Greenspan, 2005. "Federal Reserve Board's semiannual monetary policy report to the Congress: testimony before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, February 16, 2005," Speech 59, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1989. "New Indexes of Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 351-409, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dalibor Stevanovic, 2013. "Probability and Severity of Recessions," CIRANO Working Papers 2013s-43, CIRANO.
    2. Vrontos, Spyridon D. & Galakis, John & Vrontos, Ioannis D., 2021. "Modeling and predicting U.S. recessions using machine learning techniques," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 647-671.
    3. Rachidi Kotchoni & Dalibor Stevanovic, 2016. "Forecasting U.S. Recessions and Economic Activity," Working Papers hal-04141569, HAL.
    4. Hamilton, James D., 2011. "Calling recessions in real time," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1006-1026, October.
    5. Lazzarini, S. G. & Madalozzo, R. C & Artes, R. & Siqueira, J. O., 2004. "Measuring trust: An experiment in Brazil," Insper Working Papers wpe_42, Insper Working Paper, Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.
    6. Vasilios Plakandaras & Juncal Cunado & Rangan Gupta & Mark E. Wohar, 2016. "Do Leading Indicators Forecast U.S. Recessions? A Nonlinear Re-Evaluation Using Historical Data," Working Papers 201685, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    7. Valentina Aprigliano & Danilo Liberati, 2021. "Using Credit Variables to Date Business Cycle and to Estimate the Probabilities of Recession in Real Time," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 89(S1), pages 76-96, September.
    8. Drew Creal & Siem Jan Koopman & Eric Zivot, 2008. "The Effect of the Great Moderation on the U.S. Business Cycle in a Time-varying Multivariate Trend-cycle Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-069/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    9. DAVID E. ALLEN & MICHAEL McALEER & ROBERT J. POWELL & ABHAY K. SINGH, 2018. "Non-Parametric Multiple Change Point Analysis Of The Global Financial Crisis," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 13(02), pages 1-23, June.
    10. Peter Fuleky & Carl S. Bonham & Qianxue Zhao, 2013. "Estimating Demand Elasticities in Non-Stationary Panels: The Case of Hawaii's Tourism Industry," Working Papers 201314, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    11. Lippi, Marco & Reichlin, Lucrezia & Hallin, Marc & Forni, Mario & Altissimo, Filippo & Cristadoro, Riccardo & Veronese, Giovanni & Bassanetti, Antonio, 2001. "EuroCOIN: A Real Time Coincident Indicator of the Euro Area Business Cycle," CEPR Discussion Papers 3108, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Hendry, David F. & Clements, Michael P., 2003. "Economic forecasting: some lessons from recent research," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 301-329, March.
    13. Murray, James, 2014. "Fiscal Policy Uncertainty and Its Macroeconomic Consequences," MPRA Paper 57409, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Gerlach, Stefan & Gerlach-Kristen, Petra, 2002. "Estimates of Real Economic Activity in Switzerland, 1885-1930," CEPR Discussion Papers 3427, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Croushore, Dean & Evans, Charles L., 2006. "Data revisions and the identification of monetary policy shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1135-1160, September.
    16. Mehdi Abid & Rafaa Mraihi, 2015. "Energy Consumption and Industrial Production: Evidence from Tunisia at Both Aggregated and Disaggregated Levels," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 6(4), pages 1123-1137, December.
    17. Nowak, Sylwia & Anderson, Heather M., 2014. "How does public information affect the frequency of trading in airline stocks?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 26-38.
    18. Paul Viefers & Ferdinand Fichtner & Simon Junker & Maximilian Podstawski, 2014. "Filtering German Economic Conditions from a Large Dataset: The New DIW Economic Barometer," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1414, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Franck Sédillot, 2001. "La pente des taux contient-elle de l'information sur l'activité économique future ?," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 147(1), pages 141-157.
    20. Chun-Chang Lee & Chih-Min Liang & Hsing-Jung Chou, 2013. "Identifying Taiwan real estate cycle turning points- An application of the multivariate Markov-switching autoregressive Model," Advances in Management and Applied Economics, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 3(2), pages 1-1.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Recessions; Economic forecasting;

    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:fip:fedfel:y:2006:i:nov24:n:2006-32. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.