Economic Insights — Our algorithm for dating state business cycles was no match for COVID-19. But there is art in the science behind these determinations.
The COVID downturn was very brief but also very severe, so the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) decided to call it a recession unusually quickly even though it didn’t fit the normal criteria. Similarly, we chose to disregard the algorithm we created to identify state-level recessions. Instead, we determined that there was a brief pandemic recession in each state. In this article, we explain the reasoning behind our decision.
This article appeared in the Second Quarter 2023 issue of Economic Insights. Download and read the full issue.
