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Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s

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Author Info
Robert A. Margo

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Abstract

This paper surveys recent research on employment and unemployment in the 1930s. Unlike earlier studies that tended to rely heavily on aggregate time series, the research discussed in this paper focuses on disaggregated data. This shift in focus stems from two factors. First, dissaggregated evidence provides many more degrees of freedom than the decade of annual observations associated with the depression and thus can prove helpful in discriminating between macroeconomic models. Second, and more importantly, disaggregation has revealed aspects of labor market behavior hidden in the time series that are essential to their proper interpretation and which are, in any case, important in their own right. In particular, the findings dispute the view that representative-agent models are useful for interpreting shifts in employment and unemployment over the course of the Depression.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 4174.

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Date of creation: Sep 1992
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4174

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References listed on IDEAS
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. Goldin, Claudia & Margo, Robert A, 1992. "The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(1), pages 1-34, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Simon, Curtis J & Nardinelli, Clark, 1992. "Does Industrial Diversity Always Reduce Unemployment? Evidence from the Great Depression and After," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 384-97, April.
  3. Bernanke, Ben & Parkinson, Martin, 1989. "Unemployment, Inflation, and Wages in the American Depression: Are There Lessons for Europe?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 210-14, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Barry Eichengreen & Tim Hatton, 1988. "Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series 1040, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley. [Downloadable!]
  5. De Long, James Bradford & Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "Is Increased Price Flexibility Stabilizing?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 1031-44, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. O'Brien, Anthony Patrick, 1989. "A Behavioral Explanation for Nominal Wage Rigidity during the Great Depression," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 104(4), pages 719-35, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Smith, James P, 1984. "Race and Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 685-98, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Russell Cooper & Dean Corbae, 1997. "Financial Fragility and the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 6094, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Michael D. Bordo & Charles L. Evans, 1995. "Labor Productivity During the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 4415, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Joshua L. Rosenbloom & William A. Sundstrom, 1997. "The Sources of Regional Variation in the Severity of the Great Depression: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing, 1919-1937," NBER Working Papers 6288, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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