Has the Recession Started? – Code and Data

This repository contains the code and data accompanying the paper "Has the Recession Started?", written by Pascal Michaillat and Emmanuel Saez, and posted on arXiv in September 2024.

Paper webpage

The paper is available at https://pascalmichaillat.org/16/.

Raw data

The raw data used to produce the results in the paper are stored as CSV files. The data are placed in the folder raw.

• 20210719_cycle_dates_pasted.csv – US recession dates, 1929–2022
  • Source: National Bureau of Economic Research (2023)
• CLF16OV.csv – US labor-force level, 1948–2024
  • Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024)
• CompositeHWI.xlsx - Sheet1.csv – US vacancy rate, 1951–2020
  • Source: Barnichon (2010)
• HistoricalSeries_JME_2020January.csv – US unemployment and vacancy rates, 1890–2017
  • Source: Petrosky-Nadeau, Zhang (2021)
• JTSJOL.csv – US Job openings, 2001–2024
  • Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024)
• UNEMPLOY.csv – US unemployment level, 1948–2024
  • Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024)

Code

The results in the paper are produced with MATLAB code. The code is placed in the folder code.

Main script

The main script, main.m, orchestrates the production of the results in the paper. The script produces the 9 figures presented in the paper. The script generates each figure in a figure window and saves the figures as PDF files. The script also saves the data used to generate each figure in CSV files.

Setup scripts

Before the computations begin, the main script calls two setup scripts:

• setup.m – Close figure windows, clear workspace and command window, set paths to folders with raw data and figures
• formatFigure – Format default figure, and predefine line and axis styles

Production scripts

The main script produces the individual figures using a collection of production scripts:

• figure1.m – Produce figure 1
• figure2A.m – Produce figure 2A
• figure2B.m – Produce figure 2B
• figure34.m – Produce figures 3 and 4
• figure5.m – Produce figure 5
• figure6.m – Produce figures 6A and 6B
• figure7.m – Produce figure 7

Each script produces a figure in a figure window, saves a copy of the figure in PDF format, and saves the data used to generate each figure in CSV files.

Helper functions

The production scripts rely on a collection of helper functions:

• getRecession.m – Return US recession dates, 1929–2022
• getUnemployment.m – Compute and return US unemployment rate, 1929–2024
• getVacancy.m – Compute and return US vacancy rate, 1929–2024
• createIndicatorCountercyclical – Apply the Sahm filter to a countercyclical variable
• createIndicatorProcyclical – Apply the Sahm filter to a procyclical variable

Figures

The 9 figures produced by the code are saved as 9 PDF files. The data underlying each figure are saved in 9 CSV files. All the files are placed in the folder figures, each corresponding to a specific figure in the paper:

• figure1.pdf, figure1.csv – Figure 1
• figure2A.pdf, figure2A.csv – Figure 2A
• figure2B.pdf, figure2B.csv – Figure 2B
• figure3.pdf, figure34.csv – Figure 3
• figure4.pdf, figure34.csv – Figure 4
• figure5.pdf, figure5.csv – Figure 5
• figure6A.pdf, figure6.csv – Figure 6A
• figure6B.pdf, figure6.csv – Figure 6B
• figure7.pdf, figure7.csv – Figure 7

Software

The results were obtained using MATLAB R2024a on an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Sonoma 14.6.1.

License

The content of this repository is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.

Related code

• Python version of this code – Written by Jesse Stone