An economic cycle, or business cycle, has four stages: expansion, peak, contraction, and trough. The average economic cycle in the U.S. has lasted roughly five and a half years since 1950, ...

What Stage of the Economic Cycle Are We In? Nearly everyone agrees the U.S. economy has been in a state of contraction in 2022 and 2023—and many make the case that we’re in a recession .

Real Business Cycle Theory: Suggests that technology changes or external factors like natural disasters primarily drive economic ups and downs. No matter the cause, we know that these cycles ...

The “business cycle” might just be one of the oldest ideas in economics. For more than 200 years, economists have been pointing to the tendency of economies to expand, then slow down, contract ...

Business cycles are defined as a series of coordinated cyclical ups and downs in broad measures of economic activity such as output, employment, income, and sales. The beginning of a recession is at ...

A business cycle relates to economic or production fluctuations during a period of months or years. Such fluctuations generally occur during a long-term trend, between periods of rapid economic ...

There is a growing view that the U.S. business cycle has changed (for better) in a more diversified economy. To some, that sounds like tempting fate.

Business cycles are understood as having four distinct phases: Expansion: A period of economic growth, also considered the "normal" phase of the business cycle.

Encouraged by the Federal Reserve’s policy of financial repression (suppressing interest rates) since the Great Financial Crisis, the central bank’s measure of the nonfinancial business debt ...