IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v26y1990i1p3-26.html

Could a monetary base rule have prevented the great depression?

Author

Listed:
  • McCallum, Bennett T.

Abstract

This paper continues an ongoing investigation of the properties of a specific, quantitative, and operational rule for the conduct of monetary policy, a rule that specifies settings of the monetary base that are designed to keep nominal GNP growing smoothly at a noninflationary rate. Whereas previous studies have examined the rule's performance in the context of United States experience since World War II, the present paper is concerned with the period 1923-1941. Counterfactual historical simulations are conducted with the rule and a small model of nominal GNP determination, estimated with U.S. quarterly data for 1922-1941. Residuals from the estimated relationships serve as estimates of the behavioral shocks that occurred and accordingly are fed into the simulation process quarter by quarter. The simulation results indicate that nominal GNP would have been kept reasonably close to a steady 3 percent growth path over 1923-1941 if the rule had been in effect, in which case it is highly unlikely that real output and employment could have collapsed as they did during the 1930s.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • McCallum, Bennett T., 1990. "Could a monetary base rule have prevented the great depression?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 3-26, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:26:y:1990:i:1:p:3-26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304-3932(90)90029-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Benk, Szilárd & Gillman, Max & Kejak, Michal, 2010. "A banking explanation of the US velocity of money: 1919-2004," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 765-779, April.
    2. Jonathan Payne & Lawrence Uren, 2014. "Economic Policy and the Great Depression in a Small Open Economy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(2-3), pages 347-370, March.
    3. Danfeng Kong & Osamu Kamoike, "undated". "The stability condition of a forward looking Taylor rule," EAERG Discussion Paper Series 0705, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    4. McCallum, Bennett T., 2015. "Nominal GDP targeting: Policy rule or discretionary splurge?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 76-80.
    5. McNelis, Paul D. & Asilis, Carlos M., 2002. "Macroeconomic policy games and asset-price volatility in the EMS: a linear quadratic control analysis of France, Germany, Italy and Spain," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 1-24, January.
    6. McCallum, Bennett T., 1999. "Issues in the design of monetary policy rules," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 23, pages 1483-1530, Elsevier.
    7. McNelis, Paul D. & Asilis, Carlos M., 1995. "Monetary policy games with broad money targets a linear quadratic control analysis of the U.S. and Japan," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(5-7), pages 1091-1111.
    8. Damette, Olivier & Parent, Antoine, 2016. "Did the Fed follow an implicit McCallum rule during the Great Depression?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PA), pages 226-232.
    9. Thornton, Saranna Robinson, 2000. "How do broader monetary aggregates and divisia measures of money perform in McCallum's adaptive monetary rule?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 181-204.
    10. Levin, Andrew T., 2005. "Comment on: "Endogenous objectives and the evaluation of targeting rules for monetary policy"," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 913-919, July.
    11. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "Historical monetary policy analysis and the Taylor rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 983-1022, July.
    12. Thornton, Saranna R., 1998. "Suitable policy instruments for monetary rules," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 379-397, July.
    13. Gillman M. & Siklos & P.L.Silver & J.L., 1996. "Money Velocity with Costly Credit," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 515, The University of Melbourne.
    14. Fackler, James S. & Rogers, John H., 1995. "Output, inflation and stabilization: a counterfactual analysis," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 619-640, October.
    15. Michael D. Bordo & John Landon-Lane, 2010. "The Lessons from the Banking Panics in the United States in the 1930s for the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008," NBER Working Papers 16365, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Damette, Olivier & Parent, Antoine & Pellegrino, Giovanni, 2017. "Liquidity traps and large-scale financial crises," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 99-114.
    17. Orphanides, Athanasios & Wieland, Volker, 2000. "Efficient Monetary Policy Design near Price Stability," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 327-365, December.
    18. Douglas A. Irwin, 2011. "Gold Sterilization and the Recession of 1937-38," NBER Working Papers 17595, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Stark, Tom & Croushore, Dean, 1998. "Evaluating McCallum's Rule When Monetary Policy Matters," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 451-485, July.
    20. Michael T. Belongia & Peter N. Ireland, 2018. "Targeting Constant Money Growth at the Zero Lower Bound," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 14(2), pages 159-204, March.

    More about this item

    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:eee:moneco:v:26:y:1990:i:1:p:3-26. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505566 .

    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.