In these three subperiods the rate of growth was in turn relatively
slow-fast-slow,

while unemployment was successively
high-low-high.

The objective of this book is to explain why these alternations occured, how
they were related to the incidence of major recessions, and why the five major
recessions, and also the four main phases of fast growth, occurred. The analy-
sis focuses on real output and expenditure, and brings in price changes
and financial developments only as relevant to explaining real output and
expenditure.

Figure 2.1 gives a broad picture of fluctuations in the UK. It shows first the
course of GDP (top part of chart) and thus the falls in GDP during each of
the five major recessions. (Recessions are shown by the shaded bands: how
their dating was established is to be explained in the next section.) As will be
seen, the major recessions (as here defined) came either in the first twelve years
after 1920, or in the last twenty-two years before 1995, at the end of the
period--with none in the intervening forty-one years.

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