Companies attempt to predict economic trends by studying business cycles. A nation's phase in a business cycle is indicated by measuring, among other things, a country's gross domestic product (GDP), which is a comparison of the average price of a "market basket" of goods and services at a specified point in time to the average price of the same market basket items at a different point in time a recurring pattern of fluctuations in the economic activity of a nation that is characterized as expansion, peak, contraction, and trough the total output of goods and services produced by labor and property located within a country, valued at adjusted market prices a prolonged rise in the average level of prices in an economy