By Direction
There are also three terms that describe an economic indicator's direction relative to the direction of the general economy:
- Procyclical indicators move in the same direction as the general economy: they increase when the economy is doing well; decrease when it is doing badly. Gross domestic product (GDP) is a procyclic indicator.
- Countercyclical indicators move in the opposite direction to the general economy. The unemployment rate is countercyclic: it rises when the economy is deteriorating.
- Acyclical indicators are those with little or no correlation to the business cycle: they may rise or fall when the general economy is doing well, and may rise or fall when it is not doing well.
Read more about this topic: Economic Indicator
Famous quotes containing the word direction:
“The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That reality is ‘independent’ means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces our attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two terms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency, within our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless, and which drives us in a direction that is the destiny of our belief.”
—William James (1842–1910)