This paper studies the impact of recessions on the longer-run level of output using data on 23 advanced economies over the past 40 years. We find that severe recessions have a sustained and sizable negative impact on the level of output. This sustained decline in output raises questions about...

The poem contained in the Lille Stesichorus papyrus presents several features that can be usefully compared with aspects of characterization and theme in the Oedipus Tyrannos of Sophocles. If we assume that an Athenian audience in the later 5th century knew the Stesichorean composition, the...

An ethnography-of speaking-approach to proverb-use lets us explore the deployment of this genre as part of personal self-projection and of social life. Greek drama, by presenting proverbs in the mouths of its staged characters, makes use of the ordinary performance value of this “genre of...

We study the role an illiquid durable consumption good plays in determining the level of precautionary savings and the distribution of wealth in a standard Aiyagari model (i.e. a model with heterogeneous agents, idiosyncratic uncertainty, and borrowing constraints). Transactions costs induce an...

This paper studies the behavior of recoveries from recessions across 59 advanced and emerging market economies over the past 40 years. Focusing specifically on the performance of output after the recession trough, we find little or no difference in the pace of output growth across types of...