The Fisher Relation in the Great Depression and the Great Recession*
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Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions by Irving Fisher
THE DEBT-DEFLATION THEORY OF GREAT DEPRESSIONS BY IRVING FISHER INTRODUCTORY IN Booms and Depressions, I have developed, theoretically and sta- tistically, what may be called a debt-deflation theory of great depres- sions. In the preface, I stated that the results "seem largely new," I spoke thus cautiously because of my unfamiliarity with the vast literature on the subject. Since the book was published its special con- clusions have been widely accepted and, so far as I know, no one has yet found them anticipated by previous writers, though several, in- cluding myself, have zealously sought to find such anticipations. Two of the best-read authorities in this field assure me that those conclu- sions are, in the words of one of them, "both new and important." Partly to specify what some of these special conclusions are which are believed to be new and partly to fit them into the conclusions of other students in this field, I am offering this paper as embodying, in brief, my present "creed" on the whole subject of so-called "cycle theory." My "creed" consists of 49 "articles" some of which are old and some new. I say "creed" because, for brevity, it is purposely ex- pressed dogmatically and without proof. But it is not a creed in the sense that my faith in it does not rest on evidence and that I am not ready to modify it on presentation of new evidence. On the contrary, it is quite tentative. It may serve as a challenge to others and as raw material to help them work out a better product. -
Interest Rates and Expected Inflation: a Selective Summary of Recent Research
This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Explorations in Economic Research, Volume 3, number 3 Volume Author/Editor: NBER Volume Publisher: NBER Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/sarg76-1 Publication Date: 1976 Chapter Title: Interest Rates and Expected Inflation: A Selective Summary of Recent Research Chapter Author: Thomas J. Sargent Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9082 Chapter pages in book: (p. 1 - 23) 1 THOMAS J. SARGENT University of Minnesota Interest Rates and Expected Inflation: A Selective Summary of Recent Research ABSTRACT: This paper summarizes the macroeconomics underlying Irving Fisher's theory about tile impact of expected inflation on nomi nal interest rates. Two sets of restrictions on a standard macroeconomic model are considered, each of which is sufficient to iniplv Fisher's theory. The first is a set of restrictions on the slopes of the IS and LM curves, while the second is a restriction on the way expectations are formed. Selected recent empirical work is also reviewed, and its implications for the effect of inflation on interest rates and other macroeconomic issues are discussed. INTRODUCTION This article is designed to pull together and summarize recent work by a few others and myself on the relationship between nominal interest rates and expected inflation.' The topic has received much attention in recent years, no doubt as a consequence of the high inflation rates and high interest rates experienced by Western economies since the mid-1960s. NOTE: In this paper I Summarize the results of research 1 conducted as part of the National Bureaus study of the effects of inflation, for which financing has been provided by a grait from the American life Insurance Association Heiptul coinrnents on earlier eriiins of 'his p,irx'r serv marIe ti PhillipCagan arid l)y the mnibrirs Ut the stall reading Committee: Michael R. -
American Economic Association
American Economic Association /LIH&\FOH,QGLYLGXDO7KULIWDQGWKH:HDOWKRI1DWLRQV $XWKRU V )UDQFR0RGLJOLDQL 6RXUFH7KH$PHULFDQ(FRQRPLF5HYLHZ9RO1R -XQ SS 3XEOLVKHGE\$PHULFDQ(FRQRPLF$VVRFLDWLRQ 6WDEOH85/http://www.jstor.org/stable/1813352 $FFHVVHG Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aea. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Economic Review. http://www.jstor.org Life Cycle, IndividualThrift, and the Wealth of Nations By FRANCO MODIGLIANI* This paper provides a review of the theory Yet, there was a brief but influential inter- of the determinants of individual and na- val in the course of which, under the impact tional thrift that has come to be known as of the Great Depression, and of the interpre- the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH) of saving. -
Macroeconomic Dynamics at the Cowles Commission from the 1930S to the 1950S
MACROECONOMIC DYNAMICS AT THE COWLES COMMISSION FROM THE 1930S TO THE 1950S By Robert W. Dimand May 2019 COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 2195 COWLES FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS YALE UNIVERSITY Box 208281 New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8281 http://cowles.yale.edu/ Macroeconomic Dynamics at the Cowles Commission from the 1930s to the 1950s Robert W. Dimand Department of Economics Brock University 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way St. Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1 Canada Telephone: 1-905-688-5550 x. 3125 Fax: 1-905-688-6388 E-mail: [email protected] Keywords: macroeconomic dynamics, Cowles Commission, business cycles, Lawrence R. Klein, Tjalling C. Koopmans Abstract: This paper explores the development of dynamic modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations at the Cowles Commission from Roos, Dynamic Economics (Cowles Monograph No. 1, 1934) and Davis, Analysis of Economic Time Series (Cowles Monograph No. 6, 1941) to Koopmans, ed., Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models (Cowles Monograph No. 10, 1950) and Klein’s Economic Fluctuations in the United States, 1921-1941 (Cowles Monograph No. 11, 1950), emphasizing the emergence of a distinctive Cowles Commission approach to structural modelling of macroeconomic fluctuations influenced by Cowles Commission work on structural estimation of simulation equations models, as advanced by Haavelmo (“A Probability Approach to Econometrics,” Cowles Commission Paper No. 4, 1944) and in Cowles Monographs Nos. 10 and 14. This paper is part of a larger project, a history of the Cowles Commission and Foundation commissioned by the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University. Presented at the Association Charles Gide workshop “Macroeconomics: Dynamic Histories. When Statics is no longer Enough,” Colmar, May 16-19, 2019. -
Texte Intégral
Working Paper History as heresy: unlearning the lessons of economic orthodoxy O'SULLIVAN, Mary Abstract In spring 2020, in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, central bankers in rich countries made unprecedented liquidity injections to stave off an economic crisis. Such radical action by central banks gained legitimacy during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and enjoys strong support from prominent economists and economic historians. Their certainty reflects a remarkable agreement on a specific interpretation of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States, an interpretation developed by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in A Monetary History of the United States (1963). In this article, I explore the origins, the influence and the limits of A Monetary History’s interpretation for the insights it offers on the relationship between theory and history in the study of economic life. I show how historical research has been mobilised to show the value of heretical ideas in order to challenge economic orthodoxies. Friedman and Schwartz understood the heretical potential of historical research and exploited it in A Monetary History to question dominant interpretations of the Great Depression in their time. Now that [...] Reference O'SULLIVAN, Mary. History as heresy: unlearning the lessons of economic orthodoxy. Geneva : Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History, 2021, 38 p. Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:150852 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History Economic History Working Papers | No. 3/2021 History as Heresy: Unlearning the Lessons of Economic Orthodoxy The Tawney Memorial Lecture 2021 Mary O’Sullivan Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History, University of Geneva, UniMail, bd du Pont-d'Arve 40, CH- 1211 Genève 4. -
5. Monetary Policy and Monetary Reform: Irving Fisher’S Contributions to Monetary Macroeconomics
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Loef, Hans E.; Monissen, Hans G. Working Paper Monetary policy and monetary reform: Irving Fisher's contributions to monetary macroeconomics W.E.P. - Würzburg Economic Papers, No. 11 Provided in Cooperation with: University of Würzburg, Chair for Monetary Policy and International Economics Suggested Citation: Loef, Hans E.; Monissen, Hans G. (1999) : Monetary policy and monetary reform: Irving Fisher's contributions to monetary macroeconomics, W.E.P. - Würzburg Economic Papers, No. 11, University of Würzburg, Department of Economics, Würzburg This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/48451 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu W. E. P. Würzburg Economic Papers Nr. -
A Classical View of the Business Cycle
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES A CLASSICAL VIEW OF THE BUSINESS CYCLE Michael T. Belongia Peter N. Ireland Working Paper 26056 http://www.nber.org/papers/w26056 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 July 2019 We are especially grateful to David Laidler for his encouragement during the development of this paper and to John Taylor, Kenneth West, two referees, and seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta for helpful comments on previous drafts. All errors that remain are our own. Neither of us received any external support for, or has any financial interest that relates to, the research described in this paper. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2019 by Michael T. Belongia and Peter N. Ireland. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. A Classical View of the Business Cycle Michael T. Belongia and Peter N. Ireland NBER Working Paper No. 26056 July 2019 JEL No. B12,E31,E32,E41,E43,E52 ABSTRACT In the 1920s, Irving Fisher extended his previous work on the Quantity Theory to describe, through an early version of the Phillips Curve, how changes in the money stock could be associated with cyclical movements in output, employment, and inflation. -
Extensions to Notes on Macroeconomics Thomas J. Sargent July 1976 Working Paper
1 Extensions to Notes on Macroeconomics Thomas J. Sargent July 1976 Working Paper #: 64 Rsch. File #: 299.1 Not for Distribution The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System. r- -r 1 4 Extensions to Notes on Macroeconomics by Thomas Sargent July 1976 __ Contents I. In Defense of Keynesian Analyses that "Ignore" the Government's Budget Constraint II. Linear Least Squares Projection (Regressions) The Orthogonality Condition Recursive Projection The Signal Extraction Problem The Term Structure of Interest Rates III. Notes on the Consumption Function The Cross Section Data The Time Series Simulating the Model: Response to an Unexpected Change in Income Response to a Change in the Trend Rate of Growth of Income Response to a Random Tax Credit Compatability of Friedman's Model with the Time Series Regressions Testing the Model IV, The Phillips Curve V. Investment Under Uncertainty VI. Optimal Monetary Policy Optimal Control with Ad Hoc Expectations An Example The Information Variable Problem Optimal Control Under Rational Expectations Which View Does the Evidence Favor? Should the Monetary Authority Use Interest or Money as Its Instrument? In Defense of Keynesian Analyses That "Ignore" the Government's Budget Constraint Following the appearance of Carl Christ's article, it has been common to hear the textbook Keynesian model criticized for ignoring the fact that the government has a budget constraint. Christ and others have claimed that various Keynesian multiplier formulas are mistaken because they ignore the government's budget constraint. -
The Fisher Relation in the Great Depression and the Great Recession
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Laidler, David Working Paper The Fisher Relation in the Great Depression and the Great Recession EPRI Working Paper, No. 2013-2 Provided in Cooperation with: Economic Policy Research Institute (EPRI), Department of Economics, University of Western Ontario Suggested Citation: Laidler, David (2013) : The Fisher Relation in the Great Depression and the Great Recession, EPRI Working Paper, No. 2013-2, The University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute (EPRI), London (Ontario) This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/70277 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen -
Working Paper
Working Paper History as heresy: unlearning the lessons of economic orthodoxy O'SULLIVAN, Mary Abstract In spring 2020, in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, central bankers in rich countries made unprecedented liquidity injections to stave off an economic crisis. Such radical action by central banks gained legitimacy during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and enjoys strong support from prominent economists and economic historians. Their certainty reflects a remarkable agreement on a specific interpretation of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States, an interpretation developed by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in A Monetary History of the United States (1963). In this article, I explore the origins, the influence and the limits of A Monetary History’s interpretation for the insights it offers on the relationship between theory and history in the study of economic life. I show how historical research has been mobilised to show the value of heretical ideas in order to challenge economic orthodoxies. Friedman and Schwartz understood the heretical potential of historical research and exploited it in A Monetary History to question dominant interpretations of the Great Depression in their time. Now that [...] Reference O'SULLIVAN, Mary. History as heresy: unlearning the lessons of economic orthodoxy. Geneva : Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History, 2021, 38 p. Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:150852 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History Economic History Working Papers | No. 3/2021 History as Heresy: Unlearning the Lessons of Economic Orthodoxy The Tawney Memorial Lecture 2021 Mary O’Sullivan Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History, University of Geneva, UniMail, bd du Pont-d'Arve 40, CH- 1211 Genève 4. -
Irving Fisher and His Compensated Dollar Plan
Irving Fisher and His Compensated Dollar Plan Don Patinkin his is a story that illustrates the interrelationship between economic his- tory and economic thought: more precisely, between monetary history T and monetary thought. So let me begin with a very brief discussion of the relevant history. In 1879, the United States returned to the gold standard from which it had departed at the time of the Civil War. This took place in a period in which “a combination of events, including a slowing of the rate of increase of the world’s stock of gold, the adoption of the gold standard by a widening circle of countries, and a rapid increase in aggregate economic output, produced a secular decline ˙.. in the world price level measured in gold˙...” (Friedman and Schwartz 1963, p. 91; for further details, see Friedman 1990, and Laidler 1991, pp. 49–50). The specific situation thus generated in the United States was de- scribed by Irving Fisher (1913c, p. 27) in the following words: “For a quarter of a century—from 1873 to 1896—the dollar increased in purchasing power and caused a prolonged depression of trade, culminating in the political upheaval which led to the free silver campaign of 1896, when the remedy proposed was worse than the disease.” This was, of course, the campaign which climaxed with William J. Bryan’s famous “cross of gold” speech in the presidential election of 1896. Fisher’s view of this campaign reflected the fact that it called for the unlimited coinage of silver at a mint price far higher than its market value, a policy that would have led to a tremendous increase in the quantity of money and the consequent generation of strong inflationary pressures. -
In Economic Fluctuations and Project in Government Budget
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES OPTIMAL TIME—CONSISTENT FISCAL POLICY WITH UNCERTAIN LIFETIMES Guillermo A. Calvo Maurice Obstfeld Working Paper No. 1593 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 March 1985 The research reported here is part of the NBER1s research program in EconomicFluctuations and projectin Government Budget. Any opinionsexpressedare those of the authors and not those of the NationalBureauof Economic Research. NBER Working Paper 111593 March 1985 Optimal Time—Consistent Fiscal Policy with Uncertain Lifetimes ABSTRACT This paper studies optimal fiscal policy in an economy where heterogeneous agents with uncertain lifetimes coexist. We show that some plausible social welfare functions lead to time—inconsistent opti- mal plans, and we suggest restrictions on social preferences that avoid the problem. The normative prescriptions of a time—consistent utilitarian planner generalize the 'two—part Golden Rule" suggested by Samuelson, and imply aggregate dynamics similar to those arising in the Cass—Koopmans—Ramsey optimal growth framework. We characterize lump—sum transfer schemes that allow the optimal allocation to be decentralized as the competitive equilibrium of an economy with actuarially fair annuities. The lump—sum transfers that accomplish this decentralization are age dependent in general. Guillermo A. Calvo Maurice Obstfeld Department of Economics Department of Economics Columbia University Columbia University New York, NY 10027 New York, NY 10027 (212) 280—3926 (212) 280—5489 OPTIMAL