This paper analyzes changes in American business cycles over the twentieth century and suggests a possible explanation for the major changes that have and have not occurred. The empirical analysis shows that the volatility of annual real macroeconomic indicators and the average severity of...

This paper shows that inflation has depended strongly on the growth rate of output for most of the twentieth century. Only in recent years has the deviation of output from trend become the predominant determinant of price behavior. The paper also shows that the growth rate effect works primarily...

This paper evaluates the consistency of the NBER business cycle reference dates over time. Analysis of the NBER methods suggests that the early turning points are derived from detrended data, while the dates after 1927 are derived from data in levels. To evaluate the importance of this and other...

This paper examines the role of aggregate demand stimulus in ending the Great Depression. A simple calculation indicates that nearly all of the observed recovery of the U.S. economy prior to 1942 was due to monetary expansion. Huge gold inflows in the mid- and late-1930s swelled the U.S. money...

This paper argues that the collapse of stock prices in October 1929 generated temporary uncertainty about future income which caused consumers to forego purchases of durable and semidurable goods in late 1929 and much of 1930. Evidence that the stock market crash generated uncertainty is...

This paper uses simple time series techniques to analyze changes in the short-run behavior of 38 physical production series for 1889-1984. The main finding is that fluctuations in these output series in the periods 1889-1914 and 1947-1984 are very similar, while those in the period 1922- 1939...

This paper considers fiscal policy during the pandemic through the lens of optimal social insurance. We develop a simple framework to analyze how government taxes and transfers could mimic the insurance against pandemic income losses that people would like to have had. Permutations of the...