This work explores how Argentina overcame the Great Depression and asks whether active macroeconomic interventions made any contribution to the recovery. In particular, we study Argentine macroeconomic policy as it deviated from gold-standard orthodoxy after the final suspension of...

This paper examines business cycles theoretically and empirically, with a quantitative study based on experience over the long run and in a cross section of countries. Several major questions in business cycle theory are explored. Theoretical concerns indicate that the properties of business...

Business cycles are costlier and stabilization policies could be more beneficial than widely thought. This paper introduces a new test to show that all business cycles are asymmetric and resemble "mini-disasters." By this we mean that growth is pervasively fat-tailed and non-Gaussian. Using...

Using microdata for adults from the 1987-2000 years of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, I show that smoking and height-adjusted weight decline during temporary economic downturns while leisure-time physical activity rises. The drop in tobacco use occurs disproportionately among...

This study uses aggregate data for 23 OECD countries over the 1960-1997 period to examine the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and fatalities. The main finding is that total mortality and deaths from several common causes increase when labor markets strengthen. For instance,...

This paper investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions, alcohol use, and drinking problems using individual-level data from the 1987-1999 years of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. We confirm the procyclical variation in overall drinking identified in previous...

This study examines the relationship between economic conditions and health. Fixed-effect models are estimated using state level data for the 1972-1991 time period. Health is proxied by total and age- specific mortality rates, as well as by 10 particular causes of death. Total mortality and nine...

We examine how deaths and emergency department (ED) visits related to use of opioid analgesics (opioids) and other drugs vary with macroeconomic conditions. As the county unemployment rate increases by one percentage point, the opioid death rate per 100,000 rises by 0.19 (3.6%) and the opioid...

In advanced economies, a century-long near-stable ratio of credit to GDP gave way to rapid financialization and surging leverage in the last forty years. This "financial hockey stick" coincides with shifts in foundational macroeconomic relationships beyond the widely-noted return of...

Is there a link between loose monetary conditions, credit growth, house price booms, and financial instability? This paper analyzes the role of interest rates and credit in driving house price booms and busts with data spanning 140 years of modern economic history in the advanced economies. We...