No Recession . . . Yet

The press is abuzz with claims that the United States is in recession because real GDP declined in both the first and second quarters of 2022. Many people use this “two consecutive quarters of declining GDP” formula as an informal indicator of a recession. And, they are generally right, it has been useful: since 1950, nine of 11 recessions designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) included at least two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. Moreover, given the recent slowdown in economic activity, people are starting to feel as if they are experiencing a recession. Indeed, going forward, we expect that a recession will be associated with the disinflation which the Federal Reserve seeks (see our recent post).

Nevertheless, in current circumstances, there are good reasons not to rely on the simple recipe that equates two consecutive quarters of falling GDP with a recession. Indeed, when people ask us whether the economy currently is in a recession—something that occurs daily—we respond: “not yet, but very likely over the next year.”

In this post, we provide a primer on the criteria that the NBER BCDC uses to produce the authoritative dating of U.S. recessions. (The complete NBER cyclical chronology is here.) We explain how economists improve upon the simple formula by using multiple sources of information that are observed frequently and are less prone to large revisions—especially around business cycle turning points. We conclude with a brief explanation of why the risk that the United States will enter a recession in the near future is very high….

Stagflation: A Primer

The term stagflation came into common use in the mid-1970s, when many advanced economies experienced higher inflation and slower growth than they had in the 1960s. At the time, the joint behavior of inflation and economic growth confused many economists. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, growth and inflation generally moved in the same direction. Most important, inflation tended to fall during recessions and to rise in booms. Stagflation meant that these two key summary measures of macroeconomic performance moved in opposite directions. What caused this dramatic, painful, and persistent shift?

To understand the sources of stagflation in the 1970s—and how we subsequently avoided a repeat of that episode (at least so far)—we start with the simple premise that there are two types of disturbances hitting the economy: demand and supply. The first, changes in demand, moves inflation and growth in the same direction. The broad array of things that shift demand include fluctuations in consumer or business confidence, shifts in government tax and expenditure policy, and variation in the appeal of imports to domestic residents or of exports to foreigners. When any of these goes up or down, inflation and output rise and fall together.

Supply disturbances—which alter the cost of production—are fundamentally different. These stagflationary shocks move growth and inflation in opposite directions. For example, an adverse supply shock that raises the cost of production at least temporarily drives inflation up and growth down.

Importantly, these cost shocks cannot be the whole story behind a decade-long surge of inflation. Whether the consequences of a cost shock are one-off adjustments in the price level or an increase of the trend of inflation depends on the monetary policy response. Put differently, monetary policy determines whether we experience stagflation over any longer interval….

Inflation and Price Measurement: A Primer

People use a variety of statistics to gauge how the economy is doing. It is fairly straightforward to measure nominal GDP, so the challenge of estimating real economic growth arises from the need for accurate measures of prices. Price measurement also is key for inflation-targeting central bankers, who need a number as a guide and for public accountability. To be credible, that number must be based on an index constructed using established scientific methods.

Reflecting a set of well-known (and nearly insurmountable) difficulties, measured inflation has an upward bias. That is, the inflation numbers that statistical agencies report are consistently higher than the theoretical construct we would like to compute. As a consequence of this upward bias in inflation measurement, our estimates of growth in real output and real incomes are systematically too low.

The big question today is whether the bias in inflation measurement, and hence the bias in the measurement of growth, has increased in recent years. As Martin Feldstein describes in detail, the answer to this question is important, as it affects how we collectively view long-run progress. If published statistics show sluggish real growth, as well as slow growth in real wages and incomes, then people may be unduly pessimistic. A worsening bias would add to that pessimism.

In practice, however, careful recent analysis suggests that inflation measurement bias has not changed much since the early 2000s….

Fiscal Sustainability: A Primer

Nobody likes taxes, so public spending frequently exceeds revenues, leading governments to borrow. These budget deficits are a flow that add to the stock of debt. Since the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, public debt in a number of advanced economies has surged. In the United States. the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently projected that―in the absence of policy changes―federal debt held by the public is headed for record highs (as a ratio to GDP) in coming decades.

Importantly, there is a real (inflation-adjusted) limit to how much public debt a government can issue (see Sargent and Wallace). Beyond that limit, the consequences are outright default or, if the debt is in domestic currency bonds that the central bank acquires, inflation that erodes its real value leading to a partial default.

Ultimately, debt sustainability requires that a country’s ratio of public debt to GDP stabilize. Otherwise, debt eventually will rise above the real limit and trigger default or inflation. In this note, we derive and interpret a simple debt-sustainability condition. The condition states that the government primary surplus―the excess of government revenues over noninterest spending—must be at least as large as the stock of outstanding sovereign debt times the difference between the nominal interest rate the government has to pay and the rate of growth of nominal GDP. If it is not, then the ratio of debt to GDP will explode….

Time Consistency: A Primer

The problem of time consistency is one of the most profound in social science. With applications in areas ranging from economic policy to counterterrorism, it arises whenever the effectiveness of a policy today depends on the credibility of the commitment to implement that policy in the future.

For simplicity, we will define a time consistent policy as one where a future policymaker lacks the opportunity or the incentive to renege. Conversely, a policy lacks time consistency when a future policymaker has both the means and the motivation to break the commitment.

In this post, we describe the conceptual origins of time consistency. To emphasize its broad importance, we provide three economic examples—in monetary policy, prudential regulation, and tax policy—where the impact of the idea is especially notable....

The Phillips Curve: A Primer

Economists have debated the relationship between inflation and unemployment at least since A.W. Phillips’s study of U.K. data from 1861 to 1957 was published 60 years ago. The idea that a tight or slack labor market should result in faster or slower wage gains seems like a natural corollary to standard economic thinking about how prices respond to deviations of demand from supply. But, over the years, disputes about this Phillips curve relationship have been and remain fierce.

As the U.S. labor market tightens, and unemployment approaches levels we have not seen in more than 15 years, the question is whether inflation is going to make a comeback. More broadly, how useful is the Phillips curve as a guide for Federal Reserve policymakers who wish to achieve a 2-percent inflation target over the long run?

To anticipate our conclusion, despite evidence of a negative relationship between wage inflation and unemployment, central banks ought not rely on a stable Phillips curve for setting monetary policy.

Primers

Money, Banking, and Financial Markets