Contemporary observers viewed the recession that began in the summer of 1929 as nothing extraordinary. Recent analyses have shown that the subsequent large deflation was econometrically forecastable, implying that a driving force in the depression was the high expected real interest rates faced...

Daily data on spot and forward dollar/sterling exchange rates and on Britain's foreign exchange reserves are used to reassess the financial history of the 1956 Suez crisis. We find that support of sterling at its Bretton Woods lower bound lost credibility as early as July. Reserve losses also...

This paper investigates sentiment in the US economy from 1920 to 1934 using digitized articles from the Wall St Journal. We derive a monthly sentiment index and use a ten variable vector error correction model to identify sentiment shocks that are orthogonal to fundamentals. We show the timing...

This paper develops a method that uses a likelihood approach to directly compare two or more non-nested dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. It is shown how DSGE models can be compared across the whole sample and how this measure can be decomposed across individual observations...

We obtain time series estimates of the long run growth rates of 17 OECD countries, and test the hypothesis that these are the same across countries. We find that we cannot reject this hypothesis for the first and last three decades of the 20th century. We conclude that: (i) there are few, if...

Historically, episodes of rapid growth are accompanied by significant structural change. In this paper we therefore aim to quantify the extent to which factor accumulation induces structural change and productivity growth in industrializing economies. To fix ideas we present an extension of...

We study the dynamics of the cross-section distribution of patents per capita for the 48 continental U.S. states from 1930 to 2000 using a discrete-state Markov chain. We test for and find evidence in favor of the (knowledge) convergence hypothesis as we find that the distribution of patents is...

We compare male and female upward labor income mobility in Germany and the United States using the GSOEP-PSID Cross National Equivalent File. Our main interest is to test whether a glass ceiling exists for women. The standard glass ceiling hypothesis highlights the belief that the playing field...

We examine the upward labor income mobility of men and women in Germany using the GSOEP Cross National Equivalent File. Women have greater overall income mobility. However, utilizing a measure of upward income mobility and calculating the posterior probability that men?s upward income mobility...

We compare male and female upward labor income mobility in Germany and the United States using the GSOEP-PSID Cross-National Equivalent File. Our main interest is to test whether a glass ceiling exists for women. Conventional thinking about the glass ceiling highlights the belief that the...