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:
“Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun,
With my red veins full of money,
In the final direction of the elementary town
I advance for as long as forever is.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy’s will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)