DISCUSSION.

This article presents a discussion on the research paper "The 1957-58 Business Contraction: New Model or Old?" in the context of U.S. economy, by Geoffrey H. Moore from U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research, published in the May 1959 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." Moore has placed the recession in historic perspective relative to its duration and intensity. He finds it by the measures he has so skillfully developed to be somewhat more severe than its predecessors. Hence, he seems to be suggesting that the 1957-59 period of depressed activity would not be the shortest in the list, though it may be at the short end." At a later point the intermediate severity of the contraction is viewed as suggesting a year and a half to two and a half years from peak-July, 1957 to a recovery date. This opinion, on the part of Moore, seems to support that group of analysts whose enthusiasm about the levels of gross national product, industrial production, or corporate profits in 1959 is on the restrained side. If there is any wide split among business analysts as to trends in 1959, it certainly is far more over the degree of expansion than over the prospect of continued recovery in the year ahead. The optimist has the economy already entering the promised land of 500 billion dollars gross national product even before the U.S. enters the sixties. The pessimist would have it as moving up, but at a lower rate, and would frequently cite, in connection with his restraint the recession, the recovery relationships that Moore has suggested.