This study exploits panel data from 18 countries to assess the contributions of cartelization policies, monetary shocks, and productivity shocks on macroeconomic activity during the Great Depression. To construct a parsimonious and common model framework, we use the fact that many cartel...

This paper develops the first dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium analysis of the International Great Depression. We construct a new version of Lucas?s (1972) monetary misperceptions model, with a real shock (productivity) and a nominal shock (money supply). We use the model with a newly...

Latin American countries are the only Western countries that are poor and that aren't gaining ground on the United States. This paper evaluates why Latin America has not replicated Western economic success. We find that this failure is primarily due to TFP differences. Latin America's TFP gap is...

This paper studies why the General Theory had so much impact on the economics profession through the 1960s, why that impact began to wane in the 1970s, and why many economic policymakers cling to many of the tenets of the General Theory. We discuss three key elements along these lines, including...

We build a new quarterly dataset of aggregate hours worked consistent with standard NIPA constructs for 14 OECD countries over the last fifty years. We find that cyclical features of labor markets across countries differ markedly from the accepted empirical facts reported in the literature based...

This paper documents the abnormally slow recovery in the labor market during the Great Recession, and analyzes how mortgage modification policies contributed to delayed recovery. By making modifications means-tested by reducing mortgage payments based on a borrower's current income, these...

This paper documents that the time required to initiate and complete a home foreclosure rose from about 9 months on average prior to the Great Recession to an average of 15 months during the Great Recession and afterward. We refer to these changes as foreclosure delay. We also document that many...

Herbert Hoover. I develop a theory of labor market failure for the Depression based on Hoover's industrial labor program that provided industry with protection from unions in return for keeping nominal wages fixed. I find that the theory accounts for much of the depth of the Depression and for...

We document large differences in trend changes in hours worked across OECD countries over the period 1956-2004. We then assess the extent to which these changes are consistent with the intratemporal first order condition from the neoclassical growth model. We find large and trending deviations...

Since 1950, the economies of East Asia grew rapidly but received little inter-national capital, while Latin America received considerable international capitaleven as their economies stagnated. The literature typically explains the failureof capital to flow to high growth regions as resulting...