During the period 1991-93, Finland experienced the deepest economic downturn in an industrialized country since the 1930s. We argue that the culprit behind this Great Depression was the collapse of Finnish trade with the Soviet Union, because it induced a costly restructuring of the...

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...

In this paper we analyze the evolution of the Mexican economy between 1995 and 1998. The remarkable quick recovery seen in aggregate activity has not been uniform across the economy. The tradable sector has grown strongly, while the non-tradable sector has recuperated only sluggishly. This...

We explore whether the 2008 economic collapse in Iceland and subsequent economic crisis affected the probability of ischemic heart disease (IHD) events, independent of regular cyclical effects attributed to typical economic conditions. We estimate linear probability models using administrative...

Was foreign currency denominated debt a determinant of exchange rate and monetary policy during the Great Depression? Policy makers of the day thought so. High-frequency bond price data show depreciation was associated with elevated risk premia on public debt. We also show that foreign currency...

In terms of global incidence the recent crisis is fourth in ranking and comparable to 1907-08. We also calculate output losses during the recessions associated with global financial crises and again the recent crisis is similar in severity to 1907-08 and is fourth in ranking. On both dimensions...

This paper is about the size of fiscal multipliers and the sources of recovery from the Great Depression. Its baseline result is that 89.1 percent of the 1939:Q1-1941:Q4 recovery can be attributed to fiscal policy innovations, 34.1 percent to monetary policy innovations and the remaining -23.2...

The Great Depression ushered in a long era of deglobalization that lasted for many decades. An old conventional wisdom (e.g. Polanyi) argues that the common aspect of this shock across all countries, a deep depression, can explain the large and persistent global shift away from orthodox liberal...

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...

This paper presents a model of the macroeconomy that reformulates what I take to be two important ideas from Keynes General Theory. The first is that there may be a continuum of steady state unemployment rates. The second is that beliefs select an equilibrium. I argue that search and matching...