Word: nber
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When the National Bureau of Economic Research Inc. (NBER) moved to Cambridge two years ago at the order of newly-chosen president Martin S. Feldstein, professor of Economics, 14 other professors began to exit Littauer regularly for offices on Cambridge Street, with some two dozen students...
...between the bureau and Harvard is fairly close now because Feldstein is president and has rebuilt the bureau around a younger generation," Otto Eckstein, Warburg Professor of Economics and Harvard's appointee to the NBER's Board of Directors, says. "He has attracted a group of young scholars, many from Harvard--bright, capable people still in their creative years...
...NBER has classified five post-World War II business contractions as recessions. No single standard determines that judgment, but the five drops do have some common denominators. Each lasted at least nine months, during which real G.N.P. fell at least 1.5% and industrial production dropped a minimum of 8.1%. Also, the jobless rate rose at least 2.3 percentage points, to 6.1 % or more, and employment declined in more than 80% of the 30 major non-farm industries that NBER statisticians watch closely...
...downturn has lasted roughly three months, and no figures are yet available on what has happened to real G.N.P.Industrial production has dropped 1.4%, the jobless rate has risen six-tenths of a percentage point, to 5.2%, and employment has declined in about 20% of the nonfarm industries. So, by NBER standards, the U.S.is not yet in a recession-though it could enter one later...
Many economists have adopted as an informal definition of recession a decline in real gross national product-that is, G.N.P. minus the effect of inflation-in two successive quarters. Such a decline has never occurred except during a cycle that the NBER calls a recession. Last week McCracken dismissed the simple definition as "nonsense." Trying to frame a standard so exact, he said, is as "pointless" as trying to determine "the exact minimum number of whiskers that qualify to be called a beard...