Discussion Paper
Christmas, Spring and the Dawning of Economic Recovery
Six months of the year, which for convenience we call the spring and Christmas seasons, have a statistically higher number of troughs than the other six months of the year. In contrast, peaks do not exhibit any clustering. These results are drawn from the NBER chronology as well as alternative chronologies. As peaks are evenly distributed and troughs are not, it also appears that contraction lengths following peaks in the off-season are longer which is also an indication of the uneven propensity to switch regime throughout the year.