First off, hello to the forums. I just created an account, but I’ve frequented Mises for a quite some time.
I’ve got to write a paper for my macroeconomics class about the last eight recessions, their causes, and how they were resolved. It’s supposed to be about 2000 words.
“Identify 8 recent business cycles in the US economy, from peak to trough. Identify the number of months between them. Find the unemployment rate and the inflation rate at each trough and peak. Which recession was worse? Why? Were monetary and fiscal policies used to help stabilize the economy? What was done? Are we currently in a recession? How can we tell?”
I’m posting on here because I can’t find any real solid Austrian material on this subject specifically and it’s getting frustrating because I know it’s there.
I’m sure you can find some good graphs on the St. Louis Fed’s website and recession.org. You can find the # of recessions, months inbetween, and other data.
Your best bet is to take Austrian business cycle theory and apply it to the last eight recessions. For a direct application to the current recession, there is of course Meltdown by Tom Woods. According to Wikipedia, the last eight recessions (well, it’s a list of major recessions) were:
December 2007–?
March–November 2001
July 1990–March 1991
July 1981–November 1982
January–July 1980
November 1973–March 1975
December 1969–November 1970
April 1960–February 1961
You are probably familiar with these works, but some theoretical works I would cite include:
Huerta de Soto, Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles
von Mises, Ludwig, The Causes of the Economic Crisis
David Gordon suggested “five best books on the current crisis”. I’m not sure I completely agree, but nevertheless they are good resources. In regards to already existing “Austrian analysis” of those recessions, the only obvious one is Meltdown. There are a few articles on Mises.org that indirectly cover the recession of 2001 (at least, in regards to that being one of the main reasons why the Fed dropped interest rates and began the bubble which fueled the 2007 recession). Although not explicitely Austrian, there is also Out of Work by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway. They cover many of the recessions in question throughout the text (they do not cover it as much from the perspective of monetary policy, as they do from the unemployment perspective).
But, for the most part you will have to apply theory to statistics and make the analysis yourself.
To know whether or not we are currently in a recession, you need to know the definition of an economic recession.
And you also need to look at the data. Since the U.S. had GDP growth last quarter, it is no longer in a recession.
If you want an austrian perspective of the latest recession, I would recommend Peter Schiff’s latest book, Crash Proof 2.0. I haven’t actually read it yet, but I’ve read his previous 2 works and he basically rehashes the same arguments over again only updating to take current events into account. I don’t know of any systematic historical treatment of all 20th century economic crises.
If you want to answer the specific questions to satisfy your teacher so you receive a good grade, then the answers should be easy to find. For deeper research, that may be beyond the scope of your paper, try these:
Go to Mises Literature. Browse by subject; Business Cycle.
It’s just a short essay. He should just focus on answering the question in the most straightforward and conservative manner and get a good grade. All he needs to do is define the scope of the problem, look at the data and answer the question. That’s it. Nothing fancy.