IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1969.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Prewar Business Cycle Reconsidered: New Estimates of Gross NationalProduct, 1869-1918

Author

Listed:
  • Christina D. Romer

Abstract

This paper shows that the existing estimates of prewar gross national product exaggerate the size of cyclical fluctuations. The source of the exaggeration is that the original Kuznets estimates are based on the assumption that GNP moves one-for-one with commodity output valued at producer prices. New estimates of GNP for 1869-1918 are derived using the estimated aggregate relationship between GNP and commodity output for the interwar and postwar eras. The new estimates of GNP indicate that the business cycle is only slightly more severe in the pre-Worid War I era than in the post-World War II era.

Suggested Citation

  • Christina D. Romer, 1986. "The Prewar Business Cycle Reconsidered: New Estimates of Gross NationalProduct, 1869-1918," NBER Working Papers 1969, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1969
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1969.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J. Bradford DeLong & Lawrence H. Summers, 1986. "The Changing Cyclical Variability of Economic Activity in the United States," NBER Chapters, in: The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, pages 679-734, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Simon Kuznets & Elizabeth Jenks, 1961. "Capital in the American Economy: Its Formation and Financing," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn61-1.
    3. Simon Kuznets & Elizabeth Jenks, 1961. "Appendices and Index, "Capital in the American Economy: Its Formation and Financing"," NBER Chapters, in: Capital in the American Economy: Its Formation and Financing, pages 465-664, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Harold Barger, 1955. "Distribution's Place in the American Economy since 1869," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number barg55-1.
    5. Milton Friedman, 1962. "The Interpolation of Time Series by Related Series," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie62-1.
    6. John W. Kendrick, 1961. "Productivity Trends in the United States," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kend61-1.
    7. William Howard Shaw, 1947. "Value of Commodity Output since 1869," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number shaw47-1.
    8. Martin Neil Baily, 1978. "Stabilization Policy and Private Economic Behavior," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 9(1), pages 11-60.
    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. J. Bradford De Long & Lawrence H. Summers, 1988. "On the Existence and Interpretation of the "Unit Root" in U.S. GNP," NBER Working Papers 2716, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Christina D. Romer, 1999. "Changes in Business Cycles: Evidence and Explanations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 23-44, Spring.
    3. Thomas L. Hogan & Daniel J. Smith, 2022. "War, money & economy: Inflation and production in the Fed and pre-Fed periods," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 15-37, March.
    4. Andreas Hornstein, 2004. "(Un)balanced growth," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 90(Fall), pages 25-45.
    5. Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2024. "The Incubator of Human Capital: The NBER and the Rise of the Human Capital Paradigm," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic History of American Inequality: New Evidence and Perspectives, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. André A. Hofman, 2000. "The Economic Development of Latin America in the Twentieth Century," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1534.
    7. Watson, Mark W, 1994. "Business-Cycle Durations and Postwar Stabilization of the U.S. Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 24-46, March.
    8. Robert J. Gordon, 2000. "Interpreting the "One Big Wave" in U.S. Long-Term Productivity Growth," NBER Working Papers 7752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Gerben Bakker & Nicholas Crafts & Pieter Woltjer, 2019. "The Sources of Growth in a Technologically Progressive Economy: The United States, 1899–1941," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(622), pages 2267-2294.
    10. Hogan, Thomas L., 2015. "Has the Fed improved U.S. economic performance?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 257-266.
    11. Azeredo, Francisco, 2007. "The Equity Premium: A Deeper Puzzle," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt6ks5p6v5, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    12. John W. Kendrick, 1976. "Bibliography," NBER Chapters, in: The Formation and Stocks of Total Capital, pages 241-250, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Dezhbakhsh, Hashem & Levy, Daniel, 1994. "Periodic properties of interpolated time series," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 221-228.
    14. Christina D. Romer, 1987. "Changes in the Cyclical Behavior of Individual Production Series," NBER Working Papers 2440, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Gordon, Robert J., 2000. "Interpreting the 'One Big Wave' in US Long-Term Productivity Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 2608, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. J. Bradford DeLong & Lawrence H. Summers, 1986. "The Changing Cyclical Variability of Economic Activity in the United States," NBER Chapters, in: The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, pages 679-734, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Boyan Jovanovic & Peter L. Rousseau, 2000. "Vintage organization capital," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Apr.
    18. Hugh Rockoff, 2010. "On the Origins of A Monetary History," Chapters, in: Ross B. Emmett (ed.), The Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Michelle Alexopoulos, 2007. "Believe it or not! The 1930s was a technologically progressive decade," 2007 Meeting Papers 195, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Enrico Sergio Levrero, 1999. "Worker Bargaining Power and Real Wages from 1870 to 1913: Phelps Brown reconsidered," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 183-203.

    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:nbr:nberwo:1969. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.