This paper presents new annual estimates of U.S. production of pig iron and imports of pig iron products dating back to 1827. These estimates are used to assess the vulnerability of the antebellum iron industry to foreign competition and the role of the tariff in fostering the industry's early...

The NBER's pre-WWI chronology of annual peaks and troughs has the remarkable implication that the U.S. economy spent nearly every other year in recession, although previous research has argued that the post-Civil War dates are flawed. This paper extends that research by redating annual peaks and...

We extend and update the canonical methodology of Laubach and Williams (2003) to estimate the neutral rate of interest for the United States. Using quarterly data from 1940 through the present, we show that r-star has risen by approximately 100 bps since the Great Recession, to 1.5% today. We...