We investigate the circumstances in which business cycle forecasting is beneficial for business by addressing both the short-run and the long-run aspects. For an assessment of short-run forecasting we make a distinction between using publicly available information of cycle probabilities and the...

This article makes the point that business practitioners' forecasting of the business cycle was ahead of business cycle theorizing for many years. Theorists of the 1930s and 1940s were not yet ready to incorporate into their theories the business forecasting methods that had become widespread...