Duke professor Harvey says coronavirus vaccine will end U.S. downturn; positive yield curve is upbeat sign, writes Howard Gold. : Last summer, when the U.S. had just notched a decade of economic recovery and unemployment stood at 3.7%, Campbell Harvey, a professor of finance at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, predicted a recession for 2020 or early 2021. Why? Because the yield on the three-month Treasury bill was higher than the yield on the five-year Treasury note for the entire second quarter of 2019. That “inverted yield curve” had been the harbinger of the previous seven recessions.