IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmsr/401.html

Modeling great depressions: the depression in Finland in the 1990s

Author

Listed:
  • Juan Carlos Conesa
  • Timothy J. Kehoe
  • Kim J. Ruhl

Abstract

This paper is a primer on the great depressions methodology developed by Cole and Ohanian (1999, 2007) and Kehoe and Prescott (2002, 2007). We use growth accounting and simple dynamic general equilibrium models to study the depression that occurred in Finland in the early 1990s. We find that the sharp drop in real GDP over the period 1990?93 was driven by a combination of a drop in total factor productivity (TFP) during 1990?92 and of increases in taxes on labor and consumption and increases in government consumption during 1989?94, which drove down hours worked in Finland. We attempt to endogenize the drop in TFP in variants of the model with an investment sector and with terms-of-trade shocks but are unsuccessful.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Carlos Conesa & Timothy J. Kehoe & Kim J. Ruhl, 2007. "Modeling great depressions: the depression in Finland in the 1990s," Staff Report 401, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr401.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:ucp:bknber:9780226304557 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Timothy J. Kehoe & Kim J. Ruhl, 2008. "Are Shocks to the Terms of Trade Shocks to Productivity?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 804-819, October.
    3. Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2005. "Sudden Stops and Output Drops," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 381-387, May.
    4. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 2000. "The role of investment-specific technological change in the business cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 91-115, January.
    5. Mendoza, Enrique G. & Razin, Assaf & Tesar, Linda L., 1994. "Effective tax rates in macroeconomics: Cross-country estimates of tax rates on factor incomes and consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 297-323, December.
    6. Fumio Hayashi & Edward C. Prescott, 2004. "The 1990s in Japan: a lost decade," Chapters, in: Paolo Onofri (ed.), The Economics of an Ageing Population, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Correia, Isabel & Neves, Joao C. & Rebelo, Sergio, 1995. "Business cycles in a small open economy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 1089-1113, June.
    8. Robert J. Gordon, 1990. "The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gord90-1, September.
    9. Kiander, Jaakko, 2004. "The Evolution of the Finnish Model in the 1990s: from Depression to High-tech Boom," Discussion Papers 344, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    10. L. Wade, 1988. "Review," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 99-100, July.
    11. Richard Rogerson, 2007. "Taxation and market work: is Scandinavia an outlier?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 59-85, July.
    12. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Huffman, Gregory W, 1988. "Investment, Capacity Utilization, and the Real Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 402-417, June.
    13. Jaakko Kiander & Pentti Vartia, 1996. "The great depression of the 1990s in Finland," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 72-88, Spring.
    14. Gary D. Hansen & Edward C. Prescott, 1992. "Recursive methods for computing equilibria of business cycle models," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 36, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    15. Timothy J. Kehoe & Edward C. Prescott, 2007. "Great depressions of the twentieth century," Monograph, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, number 2007gdott.
    16. Rebelo, Sergio, 1991. "Long-Run Policy Analysis and Long-Run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 500-521, June.
    17. Erkki Koskela & Roope Uusitalo, 2003. "The Un-Intended Convergence: How the Finnish Unemployment Reached the European Level," CESifo Working Paper Series 878, CESifo.
    18. Douglas Gollin, 2002. "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 458-474, April.
    19. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian, 1999. "The Great Depression in the United States from a neoclassical perspective," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 23(Win), pages 2-24.
    20. Editors The, 2007. "From the Editors," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-5, June.
    21. Petri Böckerman & Jaakko Kiander, 2002. "Determination of Average Working Time in Finland," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 16(3), pages 557-568, September.
    22. Edward C. Prescott, 2002. "Prosperity and Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 1-15, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ruy Lama, 2011. "Accounting for Output Drops in Latin America," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 295-316, April.
    2. Kehoe, Timothy J. & Ruhl, Kim J., 2009. "Sudden stops, sectoral reallocations, and the real exchange rate," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 235-249, July.
    3. Roberto Ellery Jr. & Victor Gomes, 2014. "Fiscal Policy, Supply Shocks and Economic Expansion in Brazil from 2003 to 2007," Brazilian Business Review, Fucape Business School, vol. 11(3), pages 53-75, June.
    4. Gogos, Stylianos G. & Mylonidis, Nikolaos & Papageorgiou, Dimitris & Vassilatos, Vanghelis, 2014. "1979–2001: A Greek great depression through the lens of neoclassical growth theory," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 316-331.
    5. Rodríguez-López, Jesús & Torres, José L., 2012. "Technological Sources Of Productivity Growth In Germany, Japan, And The United States," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 133-150, February.
    6. Roberto Motto & Massimo Rostagno & Lawrence J. Christiano, 2010. "Financial Factors in Economic Fluctuations," 2010 Meeting Papers 141, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Keisuke Otsu, 2008. "A Neoclassical Analysis of The Korean Crisis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(2), pages 449-471, April.
    8. Hansen, G.D. & Ohanian, L.E., 2016. "Neoclassical Models in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2043-2130, Elsevier.
    9. Shigeki Kunieda, 2009. "Working Hours and Taxation," The Japanese Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(2), pages 3-22.
    10. Magnus Jonsson, 2007. "The welfare cost of imperfect competition and distortionary taxation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(4), pages 576-594, October.
    11. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2011. "Investment Shocks and the Relative Price of Investment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(1), pages 101-121, January.
    12. Kaiji Chen & Ayse Imrohoroglu & Selahattin Imrohoroglu, 2006. "Secular Movements in U.S. Saving and Consumption," 2006 Meeting Papers 154, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. S. Tolga Tiryaki, 2010. "Interest Rates and Real Business Cycles in Emerging Markets (Yukselen Piyasalarda Faiz Oranlari ve Reel Is Cevrimleri)," Working Papers 1008, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    14. Stylianos G. Gogos & Dimitris Papageorgiou & Vanghelis Vassilatos, 2017. "Rent Seeking Activities and Aggregate Economic Performance - The Case of Greece," Working Papers 201712, Athens University Of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    15. Felipe Meza & Erwan Quintin, 2005. "Financial crises and total factor productivity," Center for Latin America Working Papers 0105, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    16. Gomes, Victor & Teixeira, Arilton & Bugarin, Mirta Sataka & Ellery Jr, Roberto, 2010. "From a Miracle to a Disaster: the Brazilian Economy in the Last 3 Decades," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 30(1), October.
    17. Çiçek, Deniz & Elgin, Ceyhun, 2011. "Not-quite-great depressions of Turkey: A quantitative analysis of economic growth over 1968–2004," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2691-2700.
    18. Timothy J. Kehoe, 2003. "What Can We Learn from the Current Crisis in Argentina?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 50(5), pages 609-633, November.
    19. Otsu Keisuke, 2010. "A Neoclassical Analysis of the Asian Crisis: Business Cycle Accounting for a Small Open Economy," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-39, July.
    20. Hasan Bakhshi & Jens Larsen, 2001. "Investment-specific technological progress in the United Kingdom," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Empirical studies of structural changes and inflation, volume 3, pages 49-80, Bank for International Settlements.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • F59 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedmsr:401. 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: Kate Hansel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.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.