Introduction
We take keen interest on economic news only because we realise that recessions have a way of creeping up on us and messing up whatever big plans we have for the future. Timing is everything, the way Solomon’s wisdom teaches us in the Book of Ecclesiastes – a time to plant, a time to build, a time to keep and a time to throw away. Still, some three millenniums will pass before formal studies and public announcements are made of cyclical changes occurring in the economy.
In the U.S., although the business cycle dating committee1 was only established in 1978, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has been publishing business cycle dates since 1929. Constructing retrospectively from historical records, analysis goes back to when the economy was at the bott om in 1854.2 Formal business cycle research was pioneered by Burns and Mitchell.3
