NBER Eggheads Finally Proclaim a Recession
Jeffrey Frankel submits:
The National Bureau of Economic Research yesterday announced that its Business Cycle Dating Committee had officially determined a peak in economic activity at December 2007, which signals the start of the recession. I am a member of the committee. Though I speak only for myself, not the committee, I offer my views on two questions of possible interest:
- Who needs the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee ((BCDC)) anyway?
- Why did we pick December 2007 as the starting month of the recession?
(1) We sometimes hear the question “Who needs the NBER Committee anyway?” This question most often comes in one of two forms: