We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables with the example of age-specific mortality in the U.S., building on the Lee-Carter approach and extending it in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables underlying...

The prominent role of monetary policy in the U.S. interwar depression has been conventional wisdom since Friedman and Schwartz [1963]. This paper presents evidence on both the surprise and the systematic components of monetary policy between 1929 and 1933. Doubts surrounding GDP estimates for...

Recent research on international productivity comparisons with historical data has encountered large discrepancies between benchmark comparisons and time series extrapolations from other benchmarks. Broadberry and Burhop (2005) have recently argued that for Hoffmann’s (1965) widely accepted...

We evaluate explanations for why Germany grew so quickly in the 1950s. The recent litera- ture has emphasized convergence, structural change and institutional shake-up while minimiz- ing the importance of the postwar shock. We show that this shock and its consequences were more important than...

This paper examines the comovement of the stock market and of real activity in Germany before World War I under the effcient market hypothesis. We employ multivariate spectral analysis to compare rivaling national product estimates to stock market behavior in the frequency domain. Close...

Most treatments of the Great Depression have focused on its onset and its aftermath. In contrast, we take a unified view of the interwar period. We look at the slide into and the emergence from the 1920-21 recession and the roaring 1920s boom, as well as the slide into the Great Depression after...

Communal responsibility, a medieval institution studied by Greif (2006), supported the use of credit among European merchants in the absence of modern enforcement technologies. This paper shows how this mechanism helps to overcome enforcement problems in anonymous buyer/seller transactions. In a...