Editing Business cycle (section)

=== Mainstream economics ===
{{Main|Mainstream economics}}
Mainstream economics views business cycles as essentially "the random summation of random causes". In 1927, [[Eugen Slutzky]] observed that summing random numbers, such as the last digits of the Russian state lottery, could generate patterns akin to that we see in business cycles, an observation that has since been repeated many times. This caused economists to move away from viewing business cycles as a cycle that needed to be explained and instead viewing their apparently cyclical nature as a methodological artefact. This means that what appear to be cyclical phenomena can actually be explained as just random events that are fed into a simple linear model. Thus business cycles are essentially random shocks that average out over time. Mainstream economists have built models of business cycles based on the idea that they are caused by random shocks.<ref name="Drautzburg, Thorsten 2019">Drautzburg, Thorsten. "Why Are Recessions So Hard to Predict? Random Shocks and Business Cycles." Economic Insights 4, no. 1 (2019): 1–8.</ref><ref>Slutzky, Eugen. "The summation of random causes as the source of cyclic processes." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1937): 105–146.</ref><ref>Chatterjee, Satyajit. "From cycles to shocks: Progress in business cycle theory." Business Review 3 (2000): 27–37.</ref> Due to this inherent randomness, recessions can sometimes not occur for decades; for example, Australia did not experience any recession between 1991 and 2020.<ref>Isabella Kwai. "Australia’s First Recession in Decades Signals Tougher Times to Come."[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/business/australia-recession.html] New York Times, 09.02.20</ref>

While economists have found it difficult to forecast recessions or determine their likely severity, research indicates that longer expansions do not cause following recessions to be more severe.<ref>Tasci, Murat, and Nicholas Zevanove. "Do Longer Expansions Lead to More Severe Recessions?." Economic Commentary 2019-02 (2019).</ref>