Reader Steven Kopits writes:
Two down quarters in 2021. Typical definition of a recession. I don’t believe I have declared a recession since.
No negative quarters in 2021. I think Mr. Kopits meant 2022. No two consecutive quarters of growth in 2022 (which was Mr. Kopits’ assertion, as late as January 2023, after repeated declarations).
Here the data, as of 2024Q2 annual update.
Figure 1: Quarter-on-Quarter annualized growth for real GDP (bold blue), GDO (tan), GDP+ (green), calculated at log first differences times four. Light blue shading denotes a purported recession. Source: BEA 2024Q2 3rd release/annual update, Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.
This graph demonstrates why the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee does not put primary reliance on GDP as an indicator of recession. (Note that as of the current vintage, there was no two-consecutive-quarter decline in real GDP; but there was a two quarter decline in the 1947 period, without a recession declaration.)
Antoni claims his naive approach is how business cycles have been presented in economic textbooks for a hundred years. Of course quarterly data on real GDP did not being until 1947. And then there is:
https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/measuring-business-cycles#:~:text=Chapter%204:%20Dating%20Specific%20and%20Business
Measuring Business Cycles
Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell,
Published Date January 1946
So the two economists who pioneered this work published their thoughts not 100 years ago but in 1946. Then again EJ Antoni is so incompetent that I doubt he even knows how Burns and Mitchell were.