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Tariffs and the Great Depression revisited

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Author Info
Mario J. Crucini
James Kahn

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Abstract

Drawing on recent business cycle research on the Great Depression, we return to an argument we advanced in a 1996 article in the Journal of Monetary conomics - the argument that features of the Hawley-Smoot tariffs could have done more to decrease economic activity than is customarily believed, though not enough to account for the severe decline of the early 1930s. Here we reformulate our argument in a business cycle accounting framework that apportions fluctuations between three types of "wedges": (productive) inefficiency, the consumption-leisure margin, and intertemporal inefficiency. Tariff increases in our model correspond primarily to productive inefficiency in a prototype one-sector model. Moreover, the wedge implied by tariffs during the Depression correlates well with the overall measure of productive inefficiency. Our model fails to produce a labor wedge of any onsequence-persuasive evidence that factors other than tariffs also contributed significantly to the severity of the Depression.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its series Staff Reports with number 172.

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Date of creation: 2003
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:172

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Keywords: Depressions Tariff

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Crucini, M.J. & Kahn, J., 1994. "Tarrifs and Aggregate Economic Activity: Lessons from the Great Depression," RCER Working Papers 383, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
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  2. Casey B. Mulligan, 2002. "A Dual Method of Empirically Evaluating Dynamic Competitive Equilibrium Models with Market Distortions, Applied to the Great Depression & World War II," NBER Working Papers 8775, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Fabrizio Perri & Vincenzo Quadrini, 2002. "The Great Depression in Italy: Trade Restrictions and Real Wage Rigidities," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(1), pages 128-151, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. David K. Backus & Patrick J. Kehoe, 1992. "International Evidence on the Historical Properties of Business Cycles," Working Papers 92-5, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
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  5. Casey B. Mulligan, 2002. "A Century of Labor-Leisure Distortions," NBER Working Papers 8774, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Hall, Robert E, 1997. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations and the Allocation of Time," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages S223-50, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Rogerson, Richard, 1988. "Indivisible labor, lotteries and equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 3-16, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2002. "Business cycle accounting," Working Papers 625, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
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  9. Lee E. Ohanian, 2001. "Why Did Productivity Fall So Much during the Great Depression?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 34-38, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Alan Ahearne & Finn Kydland & Mark A. Wynne, 2005. "Ireland's great depression," Working Papers 05-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. [Downloadable!]
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