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by Animats 2470 days ago
"The indicator has both correctly signaled a recession 4–5 months following the beginning of the recession and has virtually never called a recession incorrectly since 1970.'

This is more like "how will we know when a recession has already started without waiting for a down GDP for two quarters." That's 6 months in. This signal lets you know 4-5 months in. Not exactly a leading indicator.

2 comments

> This is more like "how will we know when a recession has already started without waiting for a down GDP for two quarters." That's 6 months in.

It's at least 6 months in: NBER recession dating even for recessions that include at least two down quarters (which, while a popular conception is not the official definition, though I don't think any two-quarter consecutive downturn has failed to be included within a declared recession) is often before the first down quarter in a consecutive pair. (E.g., the Great Recession is timed from the Q4 2007 peak, even though there was only one quarter of decline immediately following, then a dead-cat bounce quarter, then a four quarter consecutive decline. If you looked for a pair of down quarters, you'd detect the Great Recession a year after it started; 4-5 months moves that up a lot.)

> has virtually never called a recession incorrectly since 1970.

"virtually never" also sounds like weasel words considering the total number of recessions.

Also, what happened before 1970? Is it possible they're just overfitting here?
IIRC that's when the key inputs to all these recession indicators began to be collected.