Over the last 20 years or so, the volatility of aggregate economic activity has fallen dramatically in most of the industrialized world. The timing and nature of the decline vary across countries, but the phenomenon has been so widespread and persistent that it has earned the label: “the Great...

This paper replicates the results in Schularick and Taylor (American Economic Review v.102, no. 2, pp. 1029-1061; ST hereafter). Specifically, I replicate ST's results in the "narrow" sense by reproducing their calculations in the open-source econometrics package gretl. I also demonstrate the...