The Record of Economic Growth, Business Cycles, and Economic Policies in American Economic History

Author(s):  
Lee Ohanian

This chapter documents and analyzes the American historical economic record of growth and business cycles within the context of long-run and short-run economic policy changes. The United States is unique among all of the developed countries in terms of having a sustained and fairly stable record of economic growth. Given the large changes in various policies that have occurred over time, this record suggests that policy shifts have had almost no impact on the growth rate over the very long run. However, policy changes have had a significant impact on economic activity over shorter horizons, including the Great Depression and World War II. This chapter also argues that microeconomic policies, such as regulatory policies, tax policies, and labor policies, have had as much of an impact on aggregate economic activity as macroeconomic policies, such as monetary policy and government spending and transfer policies

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eurilton Araújo ◽  
Luciane Carpena ◽  
Alexandre B. Cunha

We study the cyclical and growth properties of Brazilian per capita output from 1850 to 2000. We find that, contrary to some developed countries, Brazil did not experience large changes in the volatility of per capita output. However, we obtained evidence that the oscillations in economic activity became more persistent after World War II.


2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 993-1029 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Federico ◽  
Michelangelo Vasta

The impact of protection on economic growth has enjoyed a revival in recent times, with the publication of a number of comparative quantitative papers. They all share a common weakness: they measure protection as the ratio of custom revenues to import value, which biases results if demand for imports is not perfectly inelastic. In this article, we show that the measure of protection matters. We estimate the James Anderson and Peter Neary (2005) Trade Restrictiveness Index for Italy from unification to the Great Depression. We suggest a different interpretation of some key moments of Italian trade policy and we show that the aggregate welfare losses were small in the long run and mostly related to protection on sugar in the 1880s and 1890s. We document that using different measures of protection affects results of the causal relation between trade policy on economic growth in Italy and in the United States. Accordingly, we argue that a systematic re-estimating of protection in the economic history of trade policy is needed.


INFO ARTHA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Anisa Fahmi

Motivated by inter-regional disparities condition that occurs persistently, this study examines the Indonesian economy in the long run in order to know whether it tends to converge or diverge. This convergence is based on the Solow Neoclassical growth theory assuming the existence of diminishing returns to capital so that when the developed countries reach steady state conditions, developing countries will continuously grow up to 'catch-up' with developed countries. Based on regional economics perspective, each region can not be treated as a stand-alone unit,therefore, this study also focuses on the influence of spatial dependency and infrastructure. Economical and political situations of a region will influence policy in that region which will also have an impact to the neighboring regions. The estimation results of spatial cross-regressive model using fixed effect method consistently confirmed that the Indonesian economy in the long term will likely converge with a speed of 8.08 percent per year. Other findings are road infrastructure has a positive effect on economic growth and investment and road infrastructure are spatially showed a positive effect on economic growth. In other words, the investment and infrastructure of a region does not only affect the economic growth of that region but also to the economy of the contiguous regions. 


1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (11) ◽  
pp. 1815-1832 ◽  
Author(s):  
N D Uri ◽  
R Boyd

The analysis presented in this paper is concerned with the effect of resource scarcity on economic growth. After the notion of scarcity is defined and two measures of scarcity are introduced—unit cost and relative resource price—changes in the trend in resource scarcity for lead, zinc, nickel, aluminium, silver, iron, and copper in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are investigated. Only for silver and iron is there any indication that such a change has occurred. For silver, the change is transitory. It is believed that changes in resource scarcity have implications for future economic growth depending on the extent of the change and the degree to which resource scarcity and economic growth are interrelated. To see whether this is a relevant concern cointegration techniques are utilized to identify objectively a long-run equilibrium relationship between resource scarcity and economic growth. Only for the unit cost measure for lead and copper for one of the measures of cointegration is there a suggestion that resource scarcity has affected economic growth in the United States over the period 1889–1992.


Author(s):  
Jesper Rangvid

From Main Street to Wall Street examines the relation between the economy and the stock market. It discusses the academic theories and empirical facts, and guides readers through the fascinating interaction between economic activity and financial markets. Itexamines what causes long-run economic growth and shorter-term business-cycle fluctuations and analyses their impact on stock markets. From Main Street to Wall Street also discusses how investors can use knowledge of economic activity and financial markets to formulate expectations to future stock returns. The book relies on data, and figures and tables illustrate arguments and theories in intuitive ways.In the end, From Main Street to Wall Street helps academic scholars and practitioners navigate financial markets by understanding the economy.


Author(s):  
Jesper Rangvid

Chapter 1 contains an overview of the book. Part I introduces key concepts, definitions, and stylized facts regarding long–run economic growth and stock returns.Part II analyses the relation between economic growth and stock returns in the long run. Part III examines the shorter-horizon relation between economic growth and stock returns: the relation over the business cycle. Part IV explains how to make reasonable projections for economic activity, both for the short and the long run. Part V deals with expected future stock returns. The final part, a short one including one chapter only, explains how one can use the insights from the book when making investments.


Author(s):  
Jesper Rangvid

This chapter examines the relation between long-run economic growth and returns across countries. Have countries that have experienced high GDP growth historically also experienced high stock returns? The chapter contains three main messages. First, there is no clear tendency that countries that have grown fast in the past are also countries that have delivered high stock returns in the past. Second, as in the US, stock prices have in many countries followed economic activity in the long run. Third, real interest rates relate to economic growth across countries in the long run.Another conclusion emerging from this chapter is that long-run stock returns exceed long-run rates of economic growth and long-run risk-free rates by a wide margin.


2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.


2020 ◽  
pp. 348-381
Author(s):  
B. Zorina Khan

Selective case studies of the post–World War II economy have given rise to claims that national innovation systems, or dirigiste linkages between the state, universities, and industry, are required for technological change and economic growth. The long-run patterns of innovation in the leading nations of Britain, France, and the United States suggest otherwise. Administered systems, where key economic decisions were made by elites, the state, and other privileged groups, typically were associated with monopsonies and the misallocation of resources and talent. By contrast, the American experience highlights the central role of markets in ideas and decentralized incentives for innovation, in concert with flexible open-access adjacent institutions, in promoting useful knowledge and sustained technological progress.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 3779-3798 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Aratuo ◽  
Xiaoli L. Etienne ◽  
Tesfa Gebremedhin ◽  
David M. Fryson

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal linkages between tourism and economic growth in the USA and determine how they respond to shocks in the system. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a variety of time series procedures, including the bounds test, Granger causality test, impulse response functions and generalized variance decomposition to analyze the relationship between monthly tourist arrivals (TA) to the USA, real gross domestic product (GDP) and real effective exchange rates. Findings Results suggest that GDP Granger causes TA in the USA in the long run, indicating the economy-driven tourism growth hypothesis. Additionally, a shock to GDP generates a positive and significant effect on TA that persists in the long-run, while exchange rate shocks only have a significant effect in the first six months. Research limitations/implications Different tourism sectors may exert different degrees of influence on the economy. The use of aggregate data on TA in the analysis assumes homogeneity in the industry, thus, only represents the average relationship between tourism and GDP. Practical implications This study provides insight that shapes the investment, marketing, sustainability decisions of the public and private sectors aim at increasing tourist flows to drive economic development at the national, state and local levels. Originality/value Though several studies have examined the factors influencing the international tourist demand of the USA, this is the first to investigate the causal relationships between tourism, GDP and exchange rates for the USA. It is also the first in the US tourism literature to account for the nature of interactions between the three variables because of innovations in the system.


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