What Is The Business Cycle? Essay

go through cycles of expansion, recession and recovery. Monetary and fiscal policies can affect the timing and length of these cycles. In the expansion phase, the economy grows, businesses add jobs and consumer spending increases. At some point, known as

Another important factor to consider when starting a business is the “business cycle.” The business cycle is the fluctuations in economic activity that an economy will experience over a period of time. We have experience may business cycles in the United States. We refer to them as expansions and recessions. In an expansions, the economic outlook is good and growth happens, without inflation. Recessions are when the economy is shrinking and the determination factors for a recession include unemployment, low industry production, decrease sales and lower incomes. Since 1854, The United States has experienced 33

Think about the character you used during the “Living the Great Depression” activity. Is your character male or female? How old is your character? What is your character’s position in life? What is your character’s background? Does your character have other people who are dependent on him or her? Everything about a person and his or her background can influence the thoughts and opinions a person has.

According to the financial definition, a recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting longer than a few months. It is visible in industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale-retail trade. The technical indicator of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by a country's GDP. (Dictionary.com) A less official and more realistic definition of an economic recession is the social perception of the state of the economy at a given time. The collective beliefs of the public, mainly businesses and consumers, drive the social perception of whether things are seen as positive or negative. Unfortunately

Boom: - during the boom stage of the business cycle the economy is performing its best. Demand, production and sales figures are high. To meet the high levels of demand and production the business has to create new jobs; by doing this the percentage of the nation has money to spend on goods and services. However as businesses produce greater profits higher wages can be paid to employees growing their disposable income. People& businesses in the economy are allowed to spend money as there is a great business available for them.

The two economic environments that I would be describing about are recession and growth on the business activities of John Lewis. Growth occurs when more goods are being produced and consumed, and also incomes are rising. During growth people spend more money on goods and services as they have more money to spend and also businesses would invest more and hire more labour as it links to increasing demand. Recession however occurs when people involved in business become more cautious so they cut their spending down and also cut back on their orders as well as making workers unemployed or redundant.

George Santayana, a Spanish poet and philosopher said, "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." This quote applies to the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008. There are many similarities between the two, like the causes, the actual events, and the aftermaths. Several factors led to the Great Depression, which were the following: overproduction by business and agriculture, unequal distribution of wealth, Americans buying less, and finally, the stock market crash of 1929. The Great Recession also had similar factors leading to it, like the housing “bubble” burst and less consumer spending. In both events, the Presidents enacted programs that they believed would help the American people.

The Business Cycle is “…the "ups and downs" in economic activity, defined in terms of periods of expansion or recession” (Dr. Econ). Expansion is the period in which employment, production, sales and income increase. Likewise, the contrasting contraction is when the actions above decrease. In order to keep track of the fluctuations of the US’s business cycles troughs and peaks, the National Bureau of Economic Research was created. The NBER is comprised of a group of economic researchers currently led by president James Poterba. The members are usually specialized in the field of business-cycle research, and are chosen by the president. The NBER was founded in 1920 as a private non-profit “…non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.” (http://www.nber.org/info.html). The NBER dating committee was formed in 1978, and plays an important role in the US as an examiner of broad measures of economic activity, and the most reliable source of the beginning and end of recessions in the U.S. This is accomplished by gathering as much data on a given period of economic activity.

All of these factors have an enormous impact on my selected business (Barclays) as the economy goes from growth and decline. As well as many others, Barclays is majorly affected as it is in the financial industry. These different factors appear throughout what is called the ‘Business Cycle’. The cycle shows the fluctuation of the activity within the economy over a period of time and consists of 4 main stages; as well as many others,

However, Sweden and the United States are also significant trading partners, with the U.S. spending less and losing more jobs. As demand fell so did Sweden’s export contribution to its GDP, thus spiraling Sweden into a recession. Key interest rates began to fall in Sweden same as in the United States due to the global financial meltdown. “As the demand for loans diminish, interest rates tend to decline as well” (Schiller, 2010).

Ever since the Recession of 2008, the process of acquiring employment has become extremely challenging and exhausting. After months of searching, a significant amount of job seekers are willing to accept any job offers that will allow them to put food on the tables. If you follow the United States’ economic recovery, you probably know that there are about 10.5 million unemployed Americans and constant debates about how to create more jobs. What you may not know is that there are actually four million open jobs waiting to be filled. So how is it possible and who is there to blame?

Recession cycles are thought to be a normal part of living in a world of inexact balances between supply and demand. What turns a usually mild and short recession or "ordinary" business cycle into an actual depression is a subject of debate and concern. Scholars have not agreed on the exact causes and their relative importance. The search for causes is closely connected to the question of how to avoid a future depression, and so the political and policy viewpoints of scholars are mixed into the analysis of historic events eight decades ago. The even larger question is whether it was largely a failure on the part of free markets or largely a failure on the part of government efforts to regulate interest rates, curtail widespread bank failures, and control the money supply. Those who believe in a large role for the state in the economy believe it was mostly a failure of the free markets and those who believe in free markets believe it was mostly a failure of government that compounded the problem.

The business cycle model is a diagram that shows how economic activity fluctuates over time. There are four phases of this activity known as boom, recession, upswing and downswing. Overtime, the theory is that economic activity will increase and that living standards, employment and the quality of life to rise.

According to the IMF World Economic Outlook report in January 2016, Iceland’s Gross Domestic Product grew at 4.8% in 2015 (IMF, 2016). This is in stark contrast to the -4.6% decline in 2009, and -3.5% the following year. Iceland’s central bank and its government have used many different policy tools, both Fiscal and Monetary to enable the economy to recover not only as quickly as it did, the overall economy grew at just over 1% in 2011, but as strongly as it is doing now. Recent projections from the IMF WEO indicate that Iceland is expected to continue this level of growth into 2016/17 at around a 3% growth rate, inflation is ‘expected to reach 4% in early 2016 and to remain between 4 and 4.5% in the next two years.’(IMF, 2016)

Timing of the business cycle is not predictable, but its phases seem to be. Many economists site four phases—prosperity, liquidation, depression, and recovery. During a period of prosperity, a rise in production leads to increases in employment, wages, and profits. Obstacles then begin to obstruct further expansion. Production costs can increase, helping create a rise in prices, and