Since the fall of 1973, the economies of each of the world’s ten major industrial countries have been proceeding along individual business cycles that are unique to the post World War II era. The recent cycles have been unique in that each has involved the deepest and most sustained declines in real output of the postwar era, and that each has been accompanied by some of the highest rates of inflation of this period. In addition, the similarities of the individual countries’ experiences, and the coincidence of timing, suggest the possibility of common causality.