U.S. recession indicator is `not flashing code red’ yet, says pioneering yield-curve researcher

Amid the fierce debate over whether the U.S. is about to head into an economic downturn, the Duke University finance professor who pioneered the use of bond-market yield curves as a predictive tool has a few things to say.

One is that it’s too soon to say whether a contraction is on the way, though the world’s largest economy appears poised for a slowdown, according to Campbell Harvey, whose 1986 dissertation at the University of Chicago determined that the difference between long- and short-term interest rates was linked to future U.S....