Cavalcade of V's

Brad DeLong says, in reference to an article in the NY Times on the possibility of a strong recovery, that "There is no statistical evidence that a V-shaped recovery is coming." So it's time to update my presentation of the statistical evidence of a V-shaped recovery. In each of the graphs below date 0 is the trough (or in one case peak) of a particular economic indicator in each of the last five recessions, including the current one. Each graph shows the trajectory of the economic indicator leading up to and following the trough or peak (numbers on the horizontal axis measures months before and after peak or trough; quarters in the first graph). In all cases the indicator is normalized to zero at period 0.









You can draw your own conclusions. As for me, I see lots of "V"s. In each case the economy's performance in the current recovery is clearly superior to those following the 1991 and 2001 recessions. The recovery appears a bit weaker than but roughly comparable to the two strong recoveries following the 1975 and 1981 recessions.