At 10:25 AM 5/6/2005 -0500, Dan M. wrote: >> So, to return to the original point, the data says that 8 out of 9 >> recession have occurred under Republican Presidencies. Do you believe >> that this is inherently significant? > >If you look at the policies that were undertaken by Democrats and >Republicans, then I would expect recessions to be more likely, longer and >worse when Republican economic techniques are used.
Which policies and techniques are these? By what mechanism do these policies and techniques translate into recessions? > One would expect a cycle to have periodicity that >one doesn't really see here. Why would one expect the business cycle to have periodicity? > But, >when one asks the one obvious question about Republican vs. Democratic >economic policy, one can use the statistics that are valid for asking 1 >question, Not when the data set is so obviously flawed. If one reasonably expects that recessions are more-or-less exogenous, that is if on reasonably agrees that recessions are inavoidable in the long run, then one would expect them to be distributed independently of the Party in power. The fact that eight out of nine recessions happened to occur on one side of the ledger makes the eventual results a fait acompli - and in particular makes the growth extrapolations utterly meaningless. You earlier asserted that you would expect recessions to be milder under Democratic Presidencies - and yet, surely you would agree that there is no data to support this conjecture? Another important flaw is that economic growth for a given year is not an independent variable. It is serially correlated to the previous year's economic growth. Again, returning to your earlier assertion that you would expect recessions to be milder and expansions more robust under Democratic Presidencies - that suggests that what you are really looking at here is cycles. In which case, since World War II, we've only experienced three full political cycles - swings from Democrats to Republicans and backs (i.e. from the beginning of on Democratic Administration to the beginning of the first Democratic Administration following a Republican one.) Thus, I don't think that there is anywheres near enough data to run the type of analysis you are desiring. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
