Business Cycle Dating Committee
Objectives
Created in October 2020 by the Association Française de Science Economique (AFSE), the Comité de Datation des Cycles de l'Economie Française (CDCEF) aims toidentify the turning points in the business cycle( or classic cycle) for the French economy, and establish a historical chronology that will then be kept up to date.
By proposing this dating from the 1970s to the present day, the Committee is helping to shed light on a wide range of aspects of economic analysis. In macroeconomics, such a chronology is useful for deciphering and anticipating economic fluctuations through the cycle. It is also a fundamental tool for conjuncturists in studying and classifying economic indicators (leading, lagging, coincident) in relation to the reference cycle. At the international level, the availability of such a date makes it possible to make worldwide cyclical comparisons and to study the synchronization of cycles between countries. Work on the relationship between real-economy cycles and financial cycles will also be able to draw on the dating proposed by the CDCEF to compare the two types of cycles. Having a reference chronology of turning points in the economic cycle is thus invaluable as part of the tools used to implement economic policies.
Cycledefinition
The definition of the cycle adopted by the Committee corresponds to that used by the NBER for the United States and by the CEPR for the eurozone as a whole. The cycle is defined as the succession of phases of rising activity, i.e. positive economic growth (expansions), and phases of falling activity, i.e. negative growth (recessions). These different periods are delimited by peaks (highest level of activity) and troughs (lowest level of activity), corresponding to the turning points in the cycle, and are represented on the graph below:
The Committee's detailed methodology is presented here
Dates of recessions in the French economy are presented here
The Committee's future announcements are presented here
Committee members are presented here