The role of economic agents’ expectations in the formation of economic cycle: on the example of USA

Abstract

The article analyzes the mechanism of the economic cycle formation under the influence of the economic agents' expectations. The purpose of the research is to analyze the process of the economic cycle formation under the influence of the economic agents' expectations in the USA in 1947 – 2016. Based on the US data analysis, it is concluded that the peaks of economic cycles in gross domestic product (GDP) values accurately reflect the peaks of time series of the total sliding expectations by the GDP values. The proposed conceptual approaches to explaining the economic cycle mechanism are based on the real economic mechanism and can therefore be applied to its forecasting.