Trading Business-Cycle Depth for Duration using an economy-specific characteristic

Regarding the trade-off between the depth and the duration of recessions, there exists a mounting empirical evidence of the idiosyncratic and non-synchronized behavior of the business cycle over time within and across countries. To account for the trade-off, a model is presented wherein an economy-specific parameter does control the magnitude, severity and persistence of the business cycle without the need to add an asymmetric functional form [that captures the propagation mechanism] to the model. The model results show that as much as half of a percentage point of GDP in depth and a relative difference of three years duration can be attributed to this parameter. The model implies a two-dimensional depth-duration space wherein we place the [average] depth-duration expansion and contraction for the U.S.