Finding the Root Cause of Recessions
Photographer: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
The U.S. managed to avoid recession after the financial crisis, but Japan has succumbed to three contractions since 2009. Economic volatility is a key reason for this divergence, and that tells us a great deal about the risk of future U.S. recessions.
During this decade, both the U.S. and Japan have experienced multiple growth rate cycles, which consist of alternating periods of rising and falling economic growth. Japan had four growth rate cycle (GRC) downturns, three of which turned into recessions; the U.S. experienced three GRC downturns, none of which were recessionary. Why not?
In 2011, a Federal Reserve paper estimated the U.S. economy’s “stall speed,” below which it would plunge into a recession. U.S. growth promptly dropped below that threshold, yet no recession followed. So the concept — which seemed to have worked quite well since the 1950s — broke down and dropped out of the discourse.
Specifically, that estimate of the economy’s stall speed was 2 percent two-quarter annualized growth in real gross domestic income. In theory, the GDI is equal to real GDP, but is measured differently. While GDP adds up what the economy produces, such as goods and services, GDI sums up incomes, including wages, profits and taxes. The chart shows two-quarter annualized growth in real GDP for Japan (red line) and the U.S. (blue line), along with the 2 percent stall speed estimate
Most believe recessions are caused by shocks that then propagate through the economy. In contrast, our research shows that endogenous cyclical forces periodically open up windows of vulnerability for the economy, and that, once it is cyclically vulnerable, almost any exogenous shock can easily tip it into recession. Because such shocks tend to arrive sooner or later, an economy’s entry into a susceptible state is almost always followed by recession.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
