This paper provides a model of "social hysteresis" whereby long, deep recessions demotivate workers and thereby lead …

lose skill and are expensive to retrain, generating multiple steady state unemployment rates. Large temporary shocks push …, reducing hiring and catapulting the economy toward the high-unemployment steady state. Even after a short-lived liquidity trap …, the economy recovers slowly at best; at worst, it falls into a permanent unemployment trap. Because monetary policy may be …