Prewar US business cycles under uncertainty: reconstructing quarterly GDP before 1947

The Bank for International Settlements has published research reconstructing quarterly US GDP for the period before 1947, when official quarterly national accounts did not yet exist, and explicitly treating the resulting estimates as uncertain. The work fills a long-standing gap in the historical record by estimating business cycle turning points and output movements from indirect indicators and statistical methods rather than direct measurement. For traders, the transmission channel runs mainly through the historical reference series used in macro models, cycle-dating frameworks, and long-run inflation and growth priors that inform rates and risk-premium assumptions. Assets most exposed to any revision of pre-war cycle behavior are long-duration Treasuries and equity valuation models that calibrate expected recession frequency and trend growth to historical data, while the immediate price impact is likely limited given the academic nature of the output. The next thing to watch is whether the revised series is adopted by institutions such as the NBER or the Federal Reserve in updated business cycle chronologies, and whether the estimated uncertainty bands materially change historic

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