IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v33y1995i3p484-505.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Could Stable Money Have Averted the Great Contraction?

Author

Listed:
  • Bordo, Michael D
  • Choudhri, Ehsan U
  • Schwartz, Anna J

Abstract

The authors test the hypothesis that the Great Contraction would have been attenuated had the Federal Reserve not allowed the money stock to decline. They simulate a model that estimates separate relations for output and the price level and assumes that output and price dynamics are not especially sensitive to policy changes. The simulations include a strong and a weak form of Milton Friedman's constant money growth rule. The results support the hypothesis that the Great Contraction would have been mitigated and shortened had the Federal Reserve followed a constant money growth rule. Copyright 1995 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Bordo, Michael D & Choudhri, Ehsan U & Schwartz, Anna J, 1995. "Could Stable Money Have Averted the Great Contraction?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(3), pages 484-505, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:33:y:1995:i:3:p:484-505
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hamilton, James D, 1992. "Was the Deflation during the Great Depression Anticipated? Evidence from the Commodity Futures Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 157-178, March.
    2. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in Propagation of the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 257-276, June.
    3. David C. Wheelock, 1992. "Monetary policy in the Great Depression: what the Fed did and why," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Mar, pages 3-28.
    4. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March.
    5. Ben Bernanke & Frederic Mishkin, 1992. "Central Bank Behavior and the Strategy of Monetary Policy: Observations from Six Industrialized Countries," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1992, Volume 7, pages 183-238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Romer, Christina D., 1992. "What Ended the Great Depression?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 757-784, December.
    7. Milton Friedman & Anna Jacobson Schwartz, 1970. "Monetary Statistics of the United States: Estimates, Sources, Methods," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie70-1, October.
    8. Boughton, James M & Wicker, Elmus R, 1979. "The Behavior of the Currency-Deposit Ratio during the Great Depression," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 11(4), pages 405-418, November.
    9. Hafer, R W & Jansen, Dennis W, 1991. "The Demand for Money in the United States: Evidence from Cointegration Tests," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(2), pages 155-168, May.
    10. Hamilton, James D., 1987. "Monetary factors in the great depression," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 145-169, March.
    11. Robert J. Gordon, 1986. "The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gord86-1, October.
    12. Cecchetti, Stephen G & Karras, Georgios, 1994. "Sources of Output Fluctuations during the Interwar Period: Further Evidence on the Causes of the Great Depression," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 80-102, February.
    13. Ben Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1990. "Financial Fragility and Economic Performance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 87-114.
    14. Bennett T. McCallum, 1993. "Unit roots in macroeconomic time series: some critical issues," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Spr, pages 13-44.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael D. Bordo & Barry Eichengreen, 1998. "Implications of the Great Depression for the Development of the International Monetary System," NBER Chapters, in: The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century, pages 403-454, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Bordo, Michael D. & Schwartz, Anna J., 1999. "Monetary policy regimes and economic performance: The historical record," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 149-234, Elsevier.
    3. Christopher J. Erceg & Michael D. Bordo & Charles L. Evans, 2000. "Money, Sticky Wages, and the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1447-1463, December.
    4. Robert Rasche, 1995. "Pitfalls in counterfactual analyses of policy rules," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 199-202, July.
    5. Douglas A. Irwin, 2011. "Gold Sterilization and the Recession of 1937-38," NBER Working Papers 17595, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Rockoff, Hugh & White, Eugene N., 2012. "Monetary Regimes and Policy on a Global Scale: The Oeuvre of Michael D. Bordo," MPRA Paper 49672, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised May 2013.
    7. Michael Bordo, 2000. "Sound Money and Sound Financial Policy," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 18(2), pages 129-155, December.
    8. Feldstein, Martin, 1995. "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income: A Panel Study of the 1986 Tax Reform Act," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 551-572, June.
    9. Lawrence J. Christiano & Roberto Motto & Massimo Rostagno, 2003. "The Great Depression and the Friedman-Schwartz hypothesis," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 1119-1215.
    10. Michael D. Bordo & Hugh Rockoff, 2013. "Not Just the Great Contraction: Friedman and Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States 1867 to 1960," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 61-65, May.
    11. Karras, Georgios & Lee, Jin Man & Stokes, Houston, 2006. "Why are postwar cycles smoother? Impulses or propagation?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 58(5-6), pages 392-406.
    12. Galo Nuño & Pedro Tedde & Alessio Moro, 2011. "Money dynamics with multiple banks of issue: evidence from Spain 1856-1874," Working Papers 1119, Banco de España.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles W. Calomiris, 1993. "Financial Factors in the Great Depression," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 61-85, Spring.
    2. Bordo, Michael D. & Schwartz, Anna J., 1999. "Monetary policy regimes and economic performance: The historical record," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 149-234, Elsevier.
    3. Duca, John V., 2017. "The Great Depression versus the Great Recession in the U.S.: How fiscal, monetary, and financial polices compare," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 50-64.
    4. Klug, Adam & Landon-Lane, John S. & White, Eugene N., 2005. "How could everyone have been so wrong? Forecasting the Great Depression with the railroads," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 27-55, January.
    5. Christopher J. Erceg & Michael D. Bordo & Charles L. Evans, 2000. "Money, Sticky Wages, and the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1447-1463, December.
    6. Breitenlechner, Max & Mathy, Gabriel P. & Scharler, Johann, 2021. "Decomposing the U.S. Great Depression: How important were loan supply shocks?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    7. Bernanke, Ben S, 1995. "The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(1), pages 1-28, February.
    8. Gabriel P. Mathy, 2020. "How much did uncertainty shocks matter in the Great Depression?," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 14(2), pages 283-323, May.
    9. Randall E. Parker & Philip Rothman, 2004. "An Examination of the Asymmetric Effects of Money Supply Shocks in the Pre--World War I and Interwar Periods," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 88-100, January.
    10. Stephen D. Williamson, 1989. "Restrictions on Financial Intermediaries and Implications for Aggregate Fluctuations: Canada and the United States 1870–1913," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 303-350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Ritschl, Albrecht & Woitek, Ulrich, 2000. "Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression?," CEPR Discussion Papers 2547, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Albrecht Ritschl & Ulrich Woitek, "undated". "Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? A Bayesian VAR Analysis for the U.S. Economy," IEW - Working Papers 050, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    13. Randall E. Parker & James S. Fackler, "undated". "Was Debt Deflation Operative during the Great Depression?: A Note," Working Papers 0102, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.
    14. Kikuo Iwata & Yasushi Okada & Seiji Adachi & Yasuyuki Iida, 2008. "Lessons from the Inoue Zaisei and the Takahashi Zaisei," Gakushuin Economic Papers, Gakushuin University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 45(3), pages 157-182.
    15. Russell W. Cooper & Dean Corbae, 2001. "Financial collapse and active monetary policy: a lesson from the Great Depression," Staff Report 289, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    16. Cooper, Russell & Ejarque, Joao, 1995. "Financial intermediation and the Great Depression: a multiple equilibrium interpretation," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 285-323, December.
    17. Cooper, Russell & Corbae, Dean, 2002. "Financial Collapse: A Lesson from the Great Depression," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 159-190, December.
    18. Bordo, Michael D., 1986. "Explorations in monetary history: A survey of the literature," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 339-415, October.
    19. Peter F. Basile & John Landon-Lane & Hugh Rockoff, 2010. "Money and Interest Rates in the United States during the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 16204, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Mundaca, B. Gabriela, 2007. "Corporate investment, cash flow level and market imperfections: The case of Norway," Memorandum 03/2007, Oslo University, Department of Economics, revised 23 Feb 2009.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:33:y:1995:i:3:p:484-505. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.