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Good versus Bad Deflation: Lessons from the Gold Standard Era

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  • Michael D. Bordo
  • John Landon Lane
  • Angela Redish

Abstract

Deflation has had a bad rap, largely based on the experience of the 1930's when deflation was synonymous with depression. Recent experience with declining prices in Japan and China together with the concern over deflation in Europe and the United States has led to renewed attention to the topic of deflation. In this paper we focus our attention on the deflation experience of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany in the late nineteenth century during a period characterized by low deflation, rapid productivity growth, positive output growth, and where many nations had a credible nominal anchor based on gold: circumstances which have resonance with the world of today. We identify aggregate supply, aggregate demand, and money supply shocks using a structural panel vector autoregression. We then use historical decompositions to investigate the impact that these structural shocks had on output and prices. Our findings are that the deflation of the late nineteenth century reflected both positive aggregate supply shocks and negative money supply shocks. However, the negative money supply shocks had little effect on output. This we posit is because the aggregate supply curve was very steep in the short run during this period. This contrasts greatly with the deflation experience during the Great Depression. Thus our empirical evidence suggests that deflation in the nineteenth century was primarily good.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10329.

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Date of creation: Feb 2004
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10329

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Michael Bordo & John Landon-Lane & Angela Redish, 2010. "Deflation, Productivity Shocks and Gold: Evidence from the 1880–1914 Period," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 515-546, September.
  2. Andrew Filardo & Claudio E. V. Borio, 2004. "Back to the future? Assessing the deflation record," BIS Working Papers 152, Bank for International Settlements.
  3. John Landon-Lane & Kim Oosterlinck, 2005. "Hope springs eternal… French bondholders and the Soviet Repudiation (1915-1919)," Departmental Working Papers 200513, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
  4. Andrew Atkeson & Patrick J. Kehoe, 2004. "Deflation and depression: is there an empirical link?," Staff Report 331, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
  5. William T. Gavin & Athena T. Theodorou, 2005. "A common model approach to macroeconomics: using panel data to reduce sampling error," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(3), pages 203-219.
  6. Kim Oosterlinck & John Landon-lane, 2006. "Hope Springs Eternal – French Bondholders and the Soviet Repudiation (1915–1919)," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 10(4), pages 507-535, December.
  7. Tomáš Munzi & Petr Hlaváč, 2011. "Inflation Targeting and Its Impact on the Nature of the Money Supply and the Financial Imbalances," Politická ekonomie, University of Economics, Prague, vol. 2011(4), pages 435-453.
  8. Gary Saxonhouse, 2005. "Good deflation/bad deflation and Japanese economic recovery," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 201-218, November.
  9. Beckworth, David, 2007. "The postbellum deflation and its lessons for today," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 195-214, August.
  10. Gary Saxonhouse & Robert Stern, 2005. "Reversal of fortune: Macroeconomic policy, International Finance, and Banking in Japan," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 91-100, November.
  11. He, Qing & Tai-Leung Chong, Terence & Shi, Kang, 2009. "What accounts for Chinese Business Cycle?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 650-661, December.
  12. Guerrero, Federico & Parker, Elliott, 2006. "Deflation and recession: Finding the empirical link," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 12-17, October.
  13. Claudio E. V. Borio, 2006. "Monetary and prudential policies at a crossroads? New challenges in the new century," BIS Working Papers 216, Bank for International Settlements.
  14. Borio, Claudio & Filardo, Andrew J., 2004. "Looking back at the international deflation record," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 287-311, December.
  15. Faria, João Ricardo & McAdam, Peter, 2012. "A new perspective on the Gold Standard: Inflation as a population phenomenon," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1358-1370.
  16. Gang Gong & Justin Yifu Lin, 2005. "Deflationary Expansion : an Overshooting Perspective to the Recent Business Cycle in China," Macroeconomics Working Papers 21959, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
  17. John W. Keating, 2013. "What Do We Learn from Blanchard and Quah Decompositions If Aggregate Demand May Not be Long-Run Neutral?," WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS 201302, University of Kansas, Department of Economics.

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