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Monday, December 01, 2008

When Did the Recession Begin?

As noted in the post below this one, the NBER has dated the beginning of the recession as December 2007. Brad DeLong says that "I think that this was the right way to call it..." However a colleague, Jeremy Piger, has a recession dating model that indicates it wasn't exactly clear when the recession began. His recession probabilities are:

200705 1.2%
200706 1.4%
200707 1.8%
200708 2.9%
200709 4.6%
200710 7.3%
200711 10.4%
200712 17.1%
200801 23.6%
200802 33.1%
200803 37.4%
200804 42.7%
200805 47.7%
200806 54.9%
200807 66.0%
200808 96.2%
200809 99.2%

According to these numbers, one could reasonably put the peak anywhere from October 2007 to May of 2008. Here's a graph of the recession probabilities from June 1967 through September 2008:

Piger

    Posted by on Monday, December 1, 2008 at 11:11 AM in Economics | Permalink  TrackBack (1)  Comments (26)

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