In a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty, this book provides empirical guidance to the economy and what to expect in the near and distant future. Beginning with a historic look at major contributions to economic indicators and business cycles starting with Wesley Clair Mitchell (1913) to Burns and Mitchell (1946), to Moore (1961) and Zarnowitz (1992), this book explores time series forecasting and economic cycles, which are currently maintained and enhanced by The Conference Board. Given their highly statistically significant relationship with GDP and the unemployment rate, these relationships are particularly useful for practitioners to help predict business cycles.

John B. Guerard, Jr., Ph.D. is a member of the McKinley Capital Management Scientific Advisory Board. He served almost 15 years as Director of Quantitative Research at McKinley Capital Management, in Anchorage, Alaska. John is an Affiliate Instructor in the Department of Applied Mathematics, the Computational Finance and Risk Management Program, The University of Washington, Seattle, WA. He earned his AB in Economics from Duke University, MA in Economics from the University of Virginia, MSIM from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Texas, Austin. Mr. Guerard took three of his doctoral seminars at Texas from Jan Mossin, a co-developer of the Capital Asset Pricing model. John taught at the McIntire School of Commerce, the University of Virginia, Lehigh University, and Rutgers University. John taught as an adjunct faculty member at New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He worked with the DAIS Group at Drexel, Burnham, Lambert, Daiwa Securities Trust Company, where he co-managed the Japanese Equity Fund portfolio with Harry Markowitz. While serving as Director of Quantitative Research at Vantage Global Advisors, Mr. Guerard was awarded the first Moskowitz Prize for research in socially responsible investing. John has published several monographs, including Corporate Financial Policy and R&D Management (Wiley, 2006), Quantitative Corporate Finance (Kluwer, now Springer, 2007, with Eli Schwartz, the third edition is at press, 2021), The Handbook of Portfolio Construction: Contemporary Applications of Markowitz Techniques (Springer, 2010), Introduction to Financial Forecasting in Investment Analysis (Springer, 2013), and The Handbook of Applied Investment Research (World Scientific Publishing, 2020, with William T. Ziemba). John serves an Associate Editor of the Journal of Investing and The International Journal of Forecasting and has published research in The International Journal of Forecasting, Management Science, the IBM Journal of Research and Development, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Investing, Journal of Portfolio Management, The Financial Analysts Journal, Research in Finance, Research Policy, and the Journal of the Operational Research Society.