What - or Who - Started the Great Depression?

Ohanian, Lee E.

doi:10.3386/w15258

Cited by 33 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Such a perspective is also in accordance with Peter Temin's account(Temin 1990), which, on a different basis, stresses that Nazi Germany witnessed a faster recovery with lower unemployment rates than the United States because of the tougher approach towards the labour market.4 The view that the Great Depression was a State failure is upheld byOhanian (2009). Ohanian argues that Herbert Hoover's industrial programme contributed significantly to the onset of the Great Depression in the United States.…”

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confidence: 70%

Real business cycle models of the Great Depression

Pensieroso

2010

Cliometrica

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The Great Depression of the 1930s is again on the frontier of research in macroeconomics. Researchers working in the real business cycle (RBC) tradition have recently started to apply their theoretical apparatus to the event. This paper discusses the result of their work and assesses the role of history and macroeconomics in analysing the Great Depression. I argue that the breaking of the depression taboo in macroeconomics has been a desirable completion of the cliometric revolution: no historical event should be exempt from a dispassionate quantitative analysis. On the other hand, the substantive contribution of RBC models is not yet sufficient to establish a new historiography of the Great Depression.Great depression, Real business cycle, Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, Cliometrics

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confidence: 70%

Real business cycle models of the Great Depression

Pensieroso

2010

Cliometrica

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“…However, labor's relative power was falling. Popular support for labor weakened and union membership declined from 17.4% in 1921 to 10.5% by 1929 (Ohanian, 2009(Ohanian, , p. 2320, and annual average productivity gains of 5.44% between 1919 and 1929 greatly outpaced wages (Smiley, 2010, p. 9). The distributional consequences conformed to Long's (1960, p. 112) claim that 'So large is labor's share of national income that any substantial disparity between productivity and real wages would exert great impact on the other shares-either largely expropriating them or presenting them with huge windfalls.…”

Section: Busted Labor and Rising Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 96%

The Financial Crisis of 1929 Reexamined: The Role of Soaring Inequality

Wisman

2014

Review of Political Economy

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The financial crisis of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression has been endlessly studied. Still there is little consensus regarding what caused it. This article claims that wage stagnation and exploding inequality fueled three dynamics that set the stage for a financial crisis. First, consumption was constrained by the smaller share of total income accruing to workers, thereby restricting investment opportunities in the real economy. Flush with greater income and wealth, the elite flooded financial markets with credit, helping keep interest rates low and encouraging the creation of new credit instruments, some of which recycled the rich's surplus assets as debt to those less well off. Second, greater inequality pressured households to find ways to consume more in order to maintain their relative social status, resulting in reduced household saving, greater household debt, and possibly longer work hours. Third, as the rich took larger shares of income and wealth, they gained relatively more command over everything, including ideology. Reducing taxes on the rich, favoring business over labor, and failing to regulate newly evolving credit instruments flowed out of this ideology.

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“…This idea, for example, is written into the Preamble of the USA's National Labour Relations Act (NLRA, 1935) as a justification for encouragement of collective bargaining and, also, was widely cited as a justification for the minimum wage and maximum hour provisions of the Fair Labour Standards Act (FLSA, 1938) (Kaufman, 2012a(Kaufman, , 2012b. Of course, conventional economists criticize these ideas as wrong-headed and counter-productive (e.g., Neumark and Wascher, 2008;Ohanian, 2009) and employers unite in both factory and legislature to oppose them.…”

Section: Asymmetry Of Power In the Firmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing Industrial Relations Theory: An Analytical Synthesis of British-American and Pluralist-Radical Ideas

Kaufman

Gall

2015

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Résumé de l'articleRésuméCertains auteurs de premier plan en relations industrielles (RI) en sont arrivés à la conclusion que notre champ d'étude est en sérieux déclin, en partie à cause du manque d'une théorie de base unificatrice. Le problème de la théorie est accentué du fait que d'autres auteurs considèrent le développement d'une théorie fondatrice des relations industrielles soit impossible, soit non souhaitable. Nous croyons que la production d'une théorie des RI est nécessaire et possible et nous nous proposons de relever ce défi dans cet article.Un problème qui persiste depuis longtemps dans la théorisation des relations industrielles est celui d'un manque de consensus sur ce qui serait le coeur d'un construit analytique de ce champ d'étude. Toutefois, durant les deux dernières décennies, la plupart des auteurs se sont entendus sur l'idée que ce champ d'étude est centré sur la relation d'emploi. Un autre problème persistant est le fait que les divers spécialistes qui ont cherché à théoriser les relations industrielles ont utilisé différents cadres de référence théoriques -incluant le pluralisme et le marxisme radical -; différentes perspectives -notamment, l'économie, la sociologie, l'histoire et la science politique -; et, enfin, ils sont de différentes traditions nationales -dont l'anglaise, la française et l'américaine.Dans cet article, nous cherchons à faire progresser la théorie des RI et à mieux intégrer les paradigmes et les traditions nationales. Pour ce faire, nous développons une explication analytique concernant quatre caractéristiques centrales de la relation d'emploiproduction d'un surplus économique, dialectique coopération-conflit, nature indéterminée du contrat d'emploi, et asymétrie de l'autorité et du pouvoir dans l'entreprise -en utilisant un mélange intégrateur d'idées et de concepts émanant des courants pluraliste et marxiste-radical présentés dans un schéma à parties multiples construit avec des outils marginalistes de la théorie économique des conventions. Le schéma inclut les composantes centrales des RI, soit le marché du travail, l'entreprise hiérarchique, la macro-économie et le gouvernement de niveau national. Ce modèle est utilisé pour expliquer les quatre caractéristiques de la relation d'emploi et en tirer les implications pour une théorie des RI et la pratique. Les thèmes abordés sont les suivants : la représentation schématique de la taille et de la distribution du surplus économique; une nouvelle représentation analytique de l'exploitation du travail ; l'identification des conditions de l'offre de travail qui favorisent la coopération ou le conflit ; et, enfin, une démonstration de la manière dont l'inégalité dans le pouvoir de négociation sur les marchés du travail contribue à la stagnation macroéconomique et au chômage.

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What - or Who - Started the Great Depression?

Cited by 33 publications

References 23 publications

Real business cycle models of the Great Depression

Real business cycle models of the Great Depression

The Financial Crisis of 1929 Reexamined: The Role of Soaring Inequality

Advancing Industrial Relations Theory: An Analytical Synthesis of British-American and Pluralist-Radical Ideas

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