DECISION LAG: The time lag that it takes government leaders and policy makers to determine the appropriate government action needed to address an economic problem. The decision lag arises because it takes time for policy makers to chose among the array of possible policy actions, each with assorted consequences that appeal differently to different political constituencies. This "inside lag" is one of four policy lags associated with monetary and fiscal policy. The other two "inside lags" are recognition lag and implementation lag, and one "outside lag" is implementation lag. All four policy lags can reduce the effectiveness of business-cycle stabilization policies and can even destabilize the economy.

     See also | policy lags | recognition lag | implementation lag | impact lag | automatic stabilizers | stabilization policies | unemployment | contraction | inflation | expansion | Federal Open Market Committee | Federal Reserve System | government purchases | transfer payments | taxes | open market operations | discount rate | reserve requirements | fiscal policy | monetary policy | recessionary gap | inflationary gap | recessionary gap, Keynesian model | inflationary gap, Keynesian model | multiplier | accelerator principle | paradox of thrift | injections-leakages model |

DECISION LAG, AmosWEB GLOSS*arama, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: July 13, 2025].

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Everyone in the economy, 16 years of age or older, who is neither institutionalized nor in the military, and is either employed or unemployed but actively seeking employment. The civilian labor force is the "official" specification for the national economy's labor supply. It is used for such calculations as the unemployment rate and the labor force participation rate. In particular, the unemployment rate is technically specified as the "percent of the civilian labor force that is unemployed." The size of the civilian labor force (along with the wildly popular unemployment rate) is estimated monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) from data generated by the Current Population Survey (CPS).

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