Solutions For Academics

Standard economic texts give short shrift to the subject of business cycles, including the definition and prediction of recessions. This lack of exposure has perpetuated both theoretical misconceptions about business cycles and the challenge of “predicting upper turning points” highlighted by the late Otto Eckstein decades ago. The result has often been misspecification of models of the business cycle, and, as an IMF study put it, a "virtually unblemished" record of failure to predict recessions.

The resources provided by ECRI (listed below), including international cycle dates, books, papers and teaching materials, along with practical tools to monitor the economic cycle, help fill in these critical gaps in the academic literature.

Academic Resources Include

Teaching modules in PowerPoint format:
Historical business cycle reference dates for 20 countries
Historical growth rate cycle reference dates for 20 countries
Complete historical data:
Recession-Recovery Watch, featuring timely updates to:
  • Weekly Leading Index
  • U.S. Coincident Index
  • U.S. Lagging Index
  • Future Inflation Gauge
  • U.S. Leading Home Price Index
Selected ECRI research papers and articles
The book Beating the Business Cycle: How to Predict and Profit from Turning Points in the Economy:
  • used as a supplementary college text, can serve as an accessible primer for understanding the state of the art in cyclical forecasting.