The influence of the household balance sheet, the supply of credit, and uncertainty on consumer spending during the early years of the Great Depression in the USA are assessed within a unified life-cycle consumption function framework. Income uncertainty played the dominant role in the spending...

Recent tests of the Convergence Hypothesis, or the tendency for per capita income levels to narrow over time, have included a time-series testing approach (see Bernard & Durlauf, 1995, 1996; Oxley & Greasley, 1995, Greasley & Oxley, 1997, 1998a). Results have been mixed, with Bernard & Durlauf...

The collapse of residential construction was a notable feature of the Great Depression in the USA. The housing slump did not simply follow the downward shifts in income: rather residential investment collapse helped to precipitate the Great Depression. By utilizing an augmented Tobin’s q model...