WASHINGTON — In what is being hailed as the most significant act of bipartisan cooperation in a generation, seventeen of the nation's leading economic think tanks released a landmark joint report Tuesday confirming that the economy is, by most available measures, "doing something."

The 340-page document, titled Conditions and Their Nature: A Preliminary Assessment of Economic Activity in the Contemporary Moment, was produced after fourteen months of collaboration between institutions that have historically disagreed on virtually every question in modern macroeconomics. Researchers say the resulting consensus represents the outer boundary of what rival schools of thought could honestly agree upon.

"We are confident that the situation is either improving or deteriorating," the report states in its executive summary. "A third possibility — that it is doing neither in any meaningful sense — cannot be responsibly excluded."

The report urges American households to remain "cautiously optimistic and/or concerned," and to "adjust their behavior accordingly, or not, depending on how things turn out."

"What we're seeing in the data is activity. Clear, unambiguous activity. What that activity means is a separate and, frankly, much harder question."

Dr. Fenwick Prall, Senior Director of Directional Trend Analysis at the Beltway Institute for Outcomes That Are Still Developing, said the report reflects a new spirit of honesty within the profession.

"For too long, economists have been pressured to have opinions," Dr. Prall told reporters at a press briefing that lasted four hours and reached no formal conclusions. "This report is our way of saying: we see the numbers. We have run them through the models. The models have produced outputs. We are prepared to share those outputs with the public in a context-free format."

The report was immediately praised across the political spectrum. Supply-side advocates noted that it does not rule out the possibility that conditions are improving due to market confidence, while demand-side economists pointed out, with equal validity, that it does not rule out anything else either.

Consumer sentiment, meanwhile, was described in the report's third chapter as "present," with citizens reporting that they "feel some way" about current economic circumstances, a finding researchers called "robust and consistent across demographics."

The Federal Reserve declined to comment on the report's findings, issuing a statement that read, in its entirety, "Noted."

Dr. Prall acknowledged that some critics have accused the report of providing insufficient guidance, but pushed back firmly on that characterization.

"People want certainty, and I understand that impulse," he said. "But the courageous thing — the scientifically rigorous thing — is to say: something is happening to the economy, and it will probably continue happening until it stops. We stand behind that completely."

The report recommends that policymakers "consider doing something, or maintaining the current approach, depending on which one proves to have been correct."

A follow-up report is expected in eighteen months, at which point economists say they hope to have "a somewhat better sense of how some of this may be trending."