Category Archives: recession

A Depressed Growth Trajectory: The Wall Street Journal July Survey

Forecasters are downbeat relative April survey (Figure 1).  And about a third forecast negative Q/Q growth in 2022Q2, but the mean (and median) forecast is for positive growth, as shown in Figure 2 (though there being two consecutive quarters of negative growth are not central to determining whether NBER BCDC declares a recession). About a fifth of respondents predict at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth starting later in 2022-23.

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Recession Talk: US and Euro Area

From Goldman Sachs (Milo, Struyven, Revisiting Recession Facts”) today:

We see the risk that the economy enters a recession in the next year at 30% in the US, 40% in the Euro area, and 45% in the UK. … Our subjective recession probabilities are significantly higher than the average 15% annual unconditional probability of advanced economies to enter a recession since the 1960s.

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Of Revisions and Seasonality in the Pandemic Era

It’s important to recall, especially as some nowcasts suggest a negative reading for Q2 growth, that GDP numbers are revised. The first release is called an “advance” release because a substantial share of the inputs are estimated. Below are the various vintages of GDP, starting after the trough so as to better highlight recent revisions.

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