Business cycle accounting for the Japanese economy

We conducted business cycle accounting (BCA) using the method developed by Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (Chari, V.V., P.J. Kehoe, E.R. McGrattan, 2002a. Accounting for the Great Depression. Am. Econ. Rev. 92 (2), 22–27) on data from the 1980s to 1990s in Japan and from the interwar period in Japan and the United States. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we find that labor wedges may have been a major contributor to the decade-long recession in the 1990s in Japan. Assuming exogenous variations in the share of labor, we find that the deterioration in the labor wedge started around 1990, which coincides with the onset of the recession. Second, we performed an alternative BCA exercise using the capital wedge instead of the investment wedge to check the robustness of BCA implications for financial frictions. The accounting results with the capital wedge imply that financial frictions may have had a large depressive effect during the 1930s in the United States. This implication is the opposite of that from the original BCA findings.     

美国“大萧条”的解释——基于谈判势力结构的视角

美国在大萧条期间的极为不对称的谈判势力结构(垄断资本家一家独大),就决定了其经济衰退必然表现出产量的大幅度下降、较高的失业率及其持久性,由当时的金融制度及其管理技术上的缺陷导致的货币供给不足和悲观的市场预期带来的流动性下降仅仅是大萧条的辅助原因。     

The Great Depression and the rise of female employment: A new hypothesis

The life-cycle labor supply of women born at the turn of the 20th century diverged sharply from previous cohorts. Although they had similar participation rates in early adulthood, younger cohorts were significantly more likely to work at middle age. This paper documents a link between these changing patterns of female labor supply and the Great Depression. We find that the onset of the Great Depression led to an increase in young women's employment in 1930 via an added-worker effect. Cohorts induced into the workforce in the early 1930s had significantly higher employment rates through the 1940s and 1950s of up to 3 percentage points, suggesting a permanent impact of the Great Depression on women's lifecycle labor supply.     

An Assessment of the Causes of the Abandonment of the Gold Standard by the U.S. in 1933

In this paper we present an investigation of the pressures on the United States to devalue the dollar against the franc and gold in the early 1930s. We calculate monthly time-series of realignment expectations and find that these are well explained by a set of fundamental economic variables. The implication is drawn that macroeconomic events were at least in part responsible for jolting the U.S. off the gold standard and that the Federal Reserve was constrained in its response to the Depression by the United States' commitment to gold.     

The U.S. Postal Savings System and the collapse of building and loan associations during the Great Depression

Building and loan associations (B&Ls) financed over half of new houses constructed in the United States during the 1920s but they lost their predominance within the following decades as they were pushed to convert into Savings and Loans (S&Ls). This study examines whether the U.S. government-insured Postal Savings System attracted funds away from B&Ls precisely when they needed them the most in the Great Depression. Annual town- and county-level data from 1920 through 1935 for three states show that the sudden rise in local postal savings was associated with local downturns in B&Ls. Using a panel vector autoregression, we find that postal savings significantly reduced the amount of money in B&Ls, yet B&Ls had no significant effect on postal savings banks. Alternatively, postal savings had no significant effect on commercial banks. The results suggest that this competitive dynamic prevented B&Ls from rebounding in the mid-1930s and helped contributed to Great Depression's local real estate lending decline.     

Inflation expectations and the recovery from the Great Depression in Germany

A regime shift toward increased inflation expectations is credited with jump-starting the recovery from the Great Depression in the United States. What role did inflation expectations play in Germany that experienced a similarly successful economic upturn in the 1930s? We study inflation expectations in the German recovery across several methods: we conduct a narrative study of media sources; we estimate inflation expectations from a factor-augmented vector autoregression model, real interest rate forecasts, and quantitative news series. Consistently across these approaches, we do not find a shift to increased expected inflation. This recovery was different, and its causes lie elsewhere.     

Not All Financial Crises Are Alike!

The United States has experienced many financial crises, but the Great Depression, the prolonged thrift crisis of the 1980s, and the most recent Great Recession stand out. In this paper, the focus is on the differences the three crises exhibited in terms of the economic environment leading up to each crisis, the effects on financial institutions and financial markets, and the policy responses and how those responses evolved. The post-World War I macro environment leading up to the Great Depression was radically different than either the inflation environment of the 1970s and early 1980s or the housing collapse and role that subprime lending played in the Great Recession. Additionally, the financial institution failure experience was different in all three crises, as were the regulatory and legislative responses that followed. Perhaps most striking are two important differences. In the Great Depression, many very small rural banks failed. In the 1980s, the first round of failures hit mainly thrifts followed by largely smaller regional and community banks. In the Great Recession, the nation’s largest institutions were the main ones affected. Second, the runs on the institutions were also significantly different.     

Was Expansionary Monetary Policy Feasible during the Great Contraction? An Examination of the Gold Standard Constraint

The recent consensus view that the gold standard was the leading cause of the worldwide Great Depression 1929-1933 stems from the two propositions: (1) Under the gold standard, deflationary shocks were transmitted between countries and, (2) for most countries, continued adherence to gold prevented monetary authorities from offsetting banking panics and blocked their recoveries. In this article we contend that the second proposition applies only to small open economies with limited gold reserves. This was not the case for the United States, the largest country in the world, holding massive gold reserves. The United States was not constrained from using expansionary policy to offset banking panics, deflation, and declining economic activity. Simulations, based on a model of a large open economy, indicate that expansionary open market operations by the Federal Reserve at two critical junctures (October 1930 to February 1931; September 1931 through January 1932) would have been successful in averting the banking panics that occurred, without endangering convertibility. Indeed had expansionary open market purchases been conducted in 1930, the contraction would not have led to the international crises that followed.     

Estimation of historical inflation expectations

Expected inflation is a central variable in economic theory. Economic historians have estimated historical inflation expectations for a variety of purposes, including studies of the Fisher effect, the debt deflation hypothesis, central bank credibility, and expectations formation. I survey the statistical, narrative, and market-based approaches that have been used to estimate inflation expectations in historical eras, including the classical gold standard era, the hyperinflations of the 1920s, and the Great Depression, highlighting key methodological considerations and identifying areas that warrant further research. A meta-analysis of inflation expectations at the onset of the Great Depression reveals that the deflation of the early 1930s was mostly unanticipated, supporting the debt deflation hypothesis, and shows how these results are sensitive to estimation methodology.     

Are All Banking Crises Alike? The Japanese Experience in International Comparison

This paper examines episodes of banking sector distress for a large sample of developed and developing countries, highlighting the experience of Japan. We estimate a multivariate probit model that links the likelihood of banking problems to a set of macroeconomic variables and institutional characteristics. The model predicts a high probability of banking sector distress in Japan in the early 1990s. The likelihood of an episode of banking distress rose in line with the sharp drop in asset prices, deepening recession and a “moral hazard” problem (financial liberalization combined with explicit deposit insurance). J. Japan. Int. Econ., September 1999, 13(3), pp. 155–180. Department of Economics, Social Sciences 1, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064 Copyright 1999 Academic Press.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E44, G21, O16.     

Bilateralism and Regionalism in Japanese and U.S. Trade and Direct Foreign Investment Patterns

We apply a modified "gravity model" incorporating measures of factor endowments to analyze Japanese and U.S. bilateral trade flows and direct foreign investment positions with a sample of around 100 countries for the period 1985–1990. Country features that our analysis takes into account are population, income, the land–labor ratio, the average level of education, and region. We find that features of a country associated with more trade with either Japan or the United States also tend to be associated with more direct foreign investment (DFI) from Japan or the United States. U.S. economic relations with Japan and Western Europe provide an important exception. Despite U.S. concern about its trade deficit with Japan, we find Japan to be much more open to the United States, not only as a source of imports, but also as a destination for U.S. exports than most countries in Western Europe. Taking other factors into account, however, Western Europe is more open to U.S. direct foreign investment. We also find that a country′s level of education tends to increase significantly U.S. interaction of all types with that country, even after correcting for per capita income. Education does not play a significant role in Japanese trade patterns. As factor endowment theory would predict, the United States tends to trade more with densely populated countries, while Japan tends to import more from sparsely populated countries. Even after taking into account population, income, factor endowments, and region, there is a substantial degree of "bilateralism" in Japanese and U.S. economic relationships in that the residual correlation among exports, imports, and outward direct foreign investment is much larger than would be the case if these magnitudes were independent across countries. J. Japan. Int. Econ. December 1994, 8(4), pp. 478–510. Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215; and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.     

Did the Great Recession Affect Fertility? Examining the Impact of Job Displacements on the Timing of Births in the United States

We examine the impact of job losses during the Great Recession on fertility in the United States. We find that for married/cohabiting couples, job losses of males during the recession decreased the likelihood of birth. In contrast, job losses of married/cohabiting females had no impact, on average, on fertility because of opposing age-specific effects. Although younger women were reducing fertility after job losses to cope with the loss of income, older women, aged 40 and above, were more likely to have a child following their job loss. Moreover, we find that job losses of single/noncohabiting females decreased the likelihood of birth, particularly for women below the age of 25. This negative effect on fertility persisted in the medium-term, up to three years following the job losses. Overall, these results suggest that job losses during the recession may be partly responsible for the recent decline in the U.S. birth rates.     

美国金融监管改革方案及其对我国的启示

全球金融危机的爆发,暴露出美国旧的金融监管体制漏洞百出。由此,2009年6月奥巴马政府出台了美国自上世纪30年代以来规模最大的金融改革方案。该方案不仅对于美国,而且对国际金融监管体系将产生重大影响,其中一些建议和措施尤其值得理论界关注和思考。本文追溯了美国金融监管体制改革的历史变迁,考察了美国现有金融监管体制的特点和缺陷,并结合此次金融监管改革方案的内容,深入分析其特征及存疑之处,并得出对完善我国金融监管体制的若干启示。     

试论金融危机对中国经济的影响

2007年由美国房价下跌导致的次贷危机,让美国经济遭受衰退危险,并引发了全球范围内百年未遇的金融危机,到现在仍然没见底,给全球经济增长带来严重负面影响。基于此,本文在分析金融危机对中国经济影响的基础上,提出了中国防范金融危机风险的政策建议。     

Currency devaluations and beggar-my-neighbour penalties: evidence from the 1930s

The currency devaluations of the 1930s facilitated a faster recovery from the Great Depression in the countries depreciating, but their unilateral manner provoked retaliatory and discriminatory commercial policies abroad. This article explores the importance of the retaliatory motive in the imposition of trade barriers by gold bloc countries during the 1930s and its effects on trade. Relying on new and existing datasets on the introduction of quotas, tariffs, and bilateral trade costs, the quantification of the discriminatory response suggests that these countries imposed significant beggar-my-neighbour penalties. The penalties reduced trade to a similar degree that modern regional trade agreements foster trade. Furthermore, the analysis of contemporary newspapers reveals that the devaluations of the early 1930s triggered an Anglo-French trade conflict marked by tit-for-tat protectionist policies. With regards to global trade, the unilateral currency depreciations came at a high price in political and economic terms. These costs must have necessarily reduced their benefit to the world as a whole.     

New Estimates of the United States–China BilateralTrade Balances

The United States and China have vastly different official estimates of the bilateral trade imbalance. The U.S. figures show that the United States had a merchandise trade deficit of US$68.7 billion vis-à-vis China in 1999 whereas the Chinese figures show that China had a merchandise trade surplus of only US$22.4 billion vis-à-vis the United States. There is a difference of US$46.3 billion. Which set of figures is right? It turns out that neither side is completely right. Various factors, such as f.o.b.–c.i.f. adjustments and treatments of re-exports and re-export markups, complicate the measurement of the bilateral trade balance between the United States and China. One important conclusion that emerges is that while U.S. trade statistics may be more reliable than Chinese trade statistics, even they are not completely accurate. By explicitly taking into account the aforementioned factors, the discrepancy between the adjusted U.S. and Chinese data on the bilateral trade balance in 1999 is narrowed from US$46.3 billion to US$4.8 billion, or approximately 10% of the initial figure. Our best estimate for the true U.S.–China bilateral merchandise trade balance for 1999 is US$47.8 billion, in China's favor. If we take into account the trade in services, in which the United States has traditionally enjoyed a surplus, the U.S.–China bilateral trade balance may be estimated at approximately US$45 billion in 1999. Compared with the U.S. trade deficit with Japan (over US$70 billion in 1999), the U.S.–China trade deficit, appropriately adjusted, is still significantly smaller. J. Japan. Int. Econ., March 2001, 15(1), pp. 102–130. Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064; and Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-6072. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: F10, F13.     

美国经济低迷何时休?

美国经济低迷何时休的答案主要取决于未来美国的增长速度和通胀水平。本文基于对美国经济概况、人口结构和核心竞争力分析,国际外部环境和美国在经济复苏过程中货币和财政等政策取向的评估,以及和日本失去的十年的比较,认为美国经济不会长期衰退和通缩,也难以长期低迷。简单匡算表明危机后美国可能需要三年左右时间修复银行和家庭的资产报表,恢复常态经济增长。固本靠增长,治标靠通胀。     

The gold standard,trade and recovery in the 1930s:

Abstract

For some twenty years, Norway's recovery from the depression of the 1930s has been explained by the supply-side transformation of domestic industry. This article presents an alternative view. By analysing Norwegian developments in an international context, the mechanism of recovery is related to the increased foreign demand for Norwegian export products following the ending of Gold Standard constraints in 1931. Generally, we argue that just as it was external forces that led Norway into the Great Depression, such forces also paved the way for the subsequent recovery. Increased exports renewed optimism in domestic markets, bringing about a growth in investment activities and eventually a recovery in private consumption.     

完善企业年金监管的几点思考

由美国次贷危机引发的全球金融风波至今已近四年,其造成的损失和影响自20世纪30年代以来前所未有.美国、英国和欧盟为防止危机对经济的进一步拖累,纷纷提出自己的金融监管改革计划,以应对危机.文章首先介绍了美国和欧盟金融监管改革的发展历程,然后总结了美欧金融监管改革对我国加强金融监管的启示,最后结合国际金融监管改革的新动向,并从市场化、风险控制和构建合作机制等三方面提出了改善我国企业年金监管的政策建议.     

The world economic crisis and the children: A United States case study

This is a review of the United States experience with issues of child health and services, as they relate to changes in economic trends. No existing data systems are entirely adequate for reporting on the current health status of children, an important consideration for the monitoring of children's health in the United States is the focus on subgroups such as those who are disadvantaged for reasons of poverty, discrimination or geographic isolation. Ample evidence exists that children living in poverty suffer adverse health consequences and that the proportion of children living in poverty in the United States has increased steadily since 1975 and dramatically since 1981. Most measures of health status and health risks for children show steady improvements througout the 1970s. The exercise of public responsibility for financing and providing essential services and supports held constant or improved during this recession period, especially during the recession of 1974–1975. The health status and risks for children since 1981 appear to be adversely affected which must be attributed to a combination of circumstances that include serious recession, increased poverty rates for households with children and diminished health benefits and social support services. These findings suggest that when either local or widespread economic reversals are anticipated, health services and social supports for children need to be expanded rather than contracted.