This survey outlines the evolution of thought leading to the rrecent delopments in the study of business cycles.The subject is almost coextensive with short-term macrodynamics and has a large interface withmeconomics of growth, money, inflation, and expectations.The coverage is therefore both very extensive , and selective. The paper first summarizes the "stylized facts" that ought to be explained by the theory.This part discusses the varying dimensions of business cycles; their timing, amplitude, and diffusion features; some international aspects; and recent changes. The next part is a review of the literature on "self-sustaining" cycles. It notes some of the older theories and proceeds to more recent models driven by changes in investment, credit, and price-cost-profit relations. These models are mainly endogenous and deterministic.Exogenous factors and stochastic elements gain importance in the part on the modern theories of cyclical response to monetary and real disturbances.The early monetarist interpretations of the cycle are followed by the newer equilibrium models with price misperceptions and intertemporal substitution of labor. Monetary shocks continue to be used but the emphasis shifts from nominal demand changes and lagged price adjustments to informational lags and supply reactions. Various problems arise, revealed by intensive testing and criticisms.This prompts new attempts to explain the persistence of'cyclical movements and the roles of uncertainty and financial instability, real shocks, and gradual price adjustments. One conclusion is that business cycle research will profit most from (a)the updating of findings from the historical and statistical studies, and (b)using the results to eliminate inconsistencies with the evidence and to move toward a realistic synthesis of the surviving elements of the extant theories.

Journal Article Technology and Price Structure in General Interdependence Systems Get access Victor Zarnowitz Victor Zarnowitz New York, N. Y. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 23, Issue 2, 1955, Pages 109–125, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296294 Published: 01 January 1955

The aim of this study is to contribute to the measurement and analysis of errors in economists' predictions of changes in aggregate income, output, and the price level. Small sample studies of forecasts can be instructive, but their limitations must be recognized. Compilation of consistent forecast records extending over longer periods of tine is necessary to establish a reasonably reliable base for assessments of forecasting behavior and. performance. Thus the historical record of post-World War II forecasts assembled in the 1960's by the NBER is here extended and updated.

The authors define "consensus" as the degree of agreement among point predictions aimed at the same target by different individuals and " "uncertainty" as the diffuseness of the corresponding probability distributions. This distinction is made operational with the aid of the NBERAASA survey data on matched point and probabilistic forecasts of inflation and the rate of change in gross national product. The means of the two sets of forecasts agree closely. Standard deviations of point forecasts tend to understate uncertainty as measured by standard deviations of the predictive probability distributions. However, these measures of consensus and uncertainty are on the whole positively correlated. Copyright 1987 by University of Chicago Press.