Crashes and the rules they brought · 1929–1950s
1946
Measuring business cycles
Arthur Burns and Wesley Mitchell chart expansions and contractions.
Measuring Business Cycles (1946), from the National Bureau of Economic Research, dated the ups and downs of the US economy. The NBER still dates official US recessions.
💡 Why it made sense then
Understanding booms and busts required first agreeing when they started and ended.
Ideas it gave us
- 🌍 Market cycle
The market cycle is the repeating pattern of expansion, peak, contraction and recovery in prices and in the wider economy.
- 🌍 Recession
A recession is a significant, widespread fall in economic activity that lasts more than a few months. A common rule of thumb is two quarters in a row of falling real GDP.
Practise with $10,000 in play money
Free. No real money involved.