The Great Moderation refers to the fall in U.S. output growth volatility in the mid-1980s. At the same time, the United States experienced a moderation in inflation and lower average inflation. Using annual data since 1890, we find that an earlier 1946 moderation in output and consumption growth...

This paper analyses several severe financial crises observed in the history of capitalism which led to a longer period of stagnation or low growth. Comparative case studies of the Great Depression, the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Japanese crisis of the 1990s and 2000s are...

Historically high levels of private and public debt coupled with already very low short-term interest rates appear to limit the options for stimulative monetary policy in many advanced economies today. One option that has not yet been considered is monetary financing by central banks to boost...

The differential response of cash reserves of member banks and nonmember banks not subject to the 1936-37 increase in reserve requirements is estimated to determine whether the 1937-38 recession was caused by the increase in reserve requirements. We identify 17 states that maintained constant...

I jointly use daily data on deaths and public transportation ridership in San Francisco in 1918-19 to estimate a model in which agents choose their level of economic activity based on perceived infection risk, modeled as a function of current and lagged infections or deaths. Agents' choices in...

The theory of “financial fragility” emphasizes the role of weak balance sheets in propagating and magnifying macroeconomic shocks. I use a new panel dataset to investigate the relationship between financial fragility and real activity on U.S. railroads during 1929-1940. First, I formulate a...

President Trump's faux populism may deliver some immediate short-term benefits to the economy, masking the devastating long-term effects from his overall policy strategy. The latter can be termed "welfare state sabotage" and is a wholesale assault on essential public sector institutions and...

Contemporary observers viewed the recession that began in the summer of 1929 as nothing extraordinary. Recent analyses have shown that the subsequent large deflation was econometrically forecastable, implying that a driving force in the depression was the high expected real interest rates faced...

The 1951 Treasury - Federal Reserve Accord is an important milestone in central bank history. It led to a lasting separation between monetary policy and the Treasury's debt-management powers, and established an independent central bank focused on price stability and macroeconomic stability. This...

Since the current recession began in December 2007, New Deal legislation and its effectiveness have been at the center of a lively debate in Washington. This paper emphasizes some key facts about two kinds of policy that were important during the Great Depression and have since become the focus...