The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) maintains the official chronology of past U.S. business cycles. Go to its website at www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html to answer the following questions.

a. How many business cycles have occurred since the end of World War IT in 1945?

b. What was the average duration of a business cycle when measured from the end of one expansion (its peak) to the end of the next? That is, what was the average duration of a business cycle in the period from 1945 to 2009?

c. When was the last announcement by the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, and what was it?