This article considers five broad questions about the fundamental nature of business cycles and surveys relevant recent research. It is a slightly revised version of the introductory chapter to our book, Business Cycles: Durations, Dynamics, and Forecasting (Diebold and Rudebusch 1999). Both the book and this article attempt to place recent empirical business cycle research, and especially our own work, in a broader perspective. In particular, we focus on research that analyzes the durations or lengths of expansions and contractions, the co-movement and dynamics of cyclical variables, and the prediction of macroeconomic fluctuations.
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