Ah, so... SEVERAL definitions.
(But no ONE 'official government definition'. <g>)
The government (WH included...) mostly defaults to referring to N.B.E.R.'s official dating for the start and the stop of recessionary periods.
N.B.E.R. itself however has changed the methodology that it uses for declaring start and end points for recessions.
In the past it used to use 'two consecutive quarters of declining real GNP' as it's benchmark... but it switched some time ago to a new methodology:
Recession? Depression? What's the difference?
economics.about.com
The standard newspaper definition of a recession is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for two or more consecutive quarters.
This definition is unpopular with most economists for two main reasons. First, this definition does not take into consideration changes in other variables. For example this definition ignores any changes in the unemployment rate or consumer confidence. Second, by using quarterly data this definition makes it difficult to pinpoint when a recession begins or ends. This means that a recession that lasts ten months or less may go undetected.
Recession: The BCDC Definition
The Business Cycle Dating Committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides a better way to find out if there is a recession is taking place. This committee determines the amount of business activity in the economy by looking at things like employment, industrial production, real income and wholesale-retail sales. They define a recession as the time when business activity has reached its peak and starts to fall until the time when business activity bottoms out. When the business activity starts to rise again it is called an expansionary period. By this definition, the average recession lasts about a year....
Recession
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org
In economics, the term recession is generally used to describe a situation in which a country's GDP, or gross domestic product, shrinks for at least 2 consecutive quarters.[1][2]
The common dictionary definition is a contraction phase of the business cycle, or "a period of reduced economic activity."[3][4]
The U.S. based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP growth, real personal income, employment (non-farm payrolls), industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."[5]
Attributes of recessions
In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year.
>>> BUDDY NOTE: "negative REAL economic growth" refers to inflation-adjusted GNP figures, not nominal ones.
An alternative, less accepted definition of recession is a downward trend in the rate of actual GDP growth as promoted by the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research.[1] That private organization defines a recession more ambiguously as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months." A recession has many attributes that can occur simultaneously and can include declines in coincident measures of activity such as employment, investment, and corporate profits. A severe or prolonged recession is referred to as an economic depression.fgd....
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So... with various, and increasing, degrees of rigor:
a) significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.
b) significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting a minimum of two consecutive quarters.
c) a situation in which a country's (inflation-adjusted) real GDP shrinks for at least 2 consecutive quarters
d) a decline in the Gross Domestic Product (real or nominal...) for two or more consecutive quarters.
e) negative REAL GNP for two or more consecutive quarters
f) negative NOMINAL GNP for two or more consecutive quarters.
<GGG>
(So, regardless of definition... we're in the ditch right now. :-( |
