Economic Cycle Research Institute

The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) based in New York, is an independent institute formed in 1996 by Geoffrey H. Moore, Anirvan Banerji and Lakshman Achuthan.

ECRI’s mission to preserve and advance the tradition of business cycle research established by Dr. Moore at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Center for International Business Cycle Research (CIBCR).

Before there was a Business Cycle Dating Committee to determine U.S. business cycle dates, Moore determined them on the NBER's behalf from 1949 to 1978, and then served as the committee's senior member until he died in 2000. Using the same approach, ECRI has long determined recession start and end dates for over 20 other countries that are widely accepted by academics and major central banks as the definitive international business cycle chronologies.

ECRI today represents a third generation of cycle research, building on the work of ECRI's co-founder, Geoffrey H. Moore, and his mentors, Wesley C. Mitchell and Arthur F. Burns.

1920, Wesley C. Mitchell and his colleagues established the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), with a primary objective of investigating business cycles.

1927, Mitchell laid down the standard definition of business cycles: "Business cycles are a type of fluctuation found in the aggregate economic activity of nations that organize their work mainly in business enterprises: a cycle consists of expansions occurring at about the same time in many economic activities, followed by similarly general recessions, contractions, and revivals which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle; this sequence of changes is recurrent but not periodic; in duration business cycles vary from more than one year to ten or twelve years; they are not divisible into shorter cycles of similar character with amplitudes approximating their own."

1929, with the start of the Great Depression, business cycle researchers had a practical emergency on their hands. With the economy back in recession, in the summer of 1937, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. requested Mitchell "to draw up a list of statistical series that would best indicate when the recession would come to an end."

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