We show that U.S. manufacturing wages during the Great Depression were importantly determined by forces on firms' intensive margins. Short-run changes in work intensity and the longer-term goal of restoring full potential productivity combined to influence real wage growth. By contrast, the...

The very low interest rates and inflation rates of recent years has generated renewed interest in alternative policies that would not leave central banks trapped by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. Amongst this debate, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the possibility...