Countercyclical Policy and the Speed of Recovery after Recessions

We consider policies intended to accelerate recoveries by analyzing the duration of recoveries of U.S. states. Studying multiple recessions for a state and multiple states for a recession controls for differences in the economic conditions and the causes of recessions. Expansionary monetary policy at the national level helps to stimulate the exit of individual states from recession. Exogenous measures of decreases in taxes or targeted increases in federal spending reduce state recovery times, while ambient economic conditions (other states in the same region suffering from recession, the length of the preceding recession, and increases in oil prices) extend recovery times.     

Tesla电动车：冒险家的疯狂梦想

去年年初，Tesla汽车公司首席执行官ElonMusk身着贴身牛仔裤、皮靴和夹克，在电子音乐声中揭开一块黑色幕布，展示给世人一辆炫光四射的银色汽车：ModelS电动车原型。Musk对着—群客户、记者和名流宣称：“这是最具历史意义的汽车。”ModelS电动车外表时尚，启动噪音宛如耳语。这对于那些腰缠万贯的富豪们，真是太具诱惑力了。     

Cambridge and Its Revolution: A Perspective on the Multiplier and Effective Demand*

The tendency of various scholarship has been so to interpret Kahn's multiplier article as to invite wonder that Keynes did not break through earlier to his consumption function and effective demand. And while Keynes was independently along this road it is difficult to believe that Jens Warming, deploying a personal propensity to save within the investment multiplier mechanism, did not help him to arrive. Ironically Kahn, who resisted Warming's innovation, did incidentally point the way to a formulation of the effective demand problem which was alternative to that of Keynes.     

Measures of per Capita Hours and Their Implications for the Technology-Hours Debate

Structural vector autoregressions give conflicting results on the effects of technology shocks on hours. The results depend crucially on the assumed data generating process for hours per capita. We show that the standard measure of hours per capita and productivity have significant low-frequency movements that are the source of the conflicting results. Hodrick–Prescott (HP)-filtered hours per capita produce results consistent with those obtained when hours are assumed to have a unit root. We show that important sources of the low-frequency movements in the standard measure are sectoral shifts in hours and the changing age composition of the working-age population. When we control for these low-frequency components to determine the effect of technology shocks on hours using long-run restrictions we get one consistent answer: hours decline in the short run in response to a positive technology shock. We further extend the analysis by examining the effects of demographic controls on the impulse responses to investment-specific technology shocks. Our results are less conclusive.     

The Propagation of Keynesian Thinking in Australia: E. R. Walker 1933-36*

Walker attended Cambridge in the early 1930s when Keynes was moving toward an expenditure-oriented explanation of output and employment but had yet to break through to his theory of effective demand. In conveying this thinking to an Australian audience through 1933-35, and in setting up as a Keynesian critic of depression policy, Walker raised the level of local discourse upon the unemployment problem. In 1936, too, he was quick to novelty in the General Theory; but now others were to carry forward the intellectual revolution that was consummated in war and post-war planning.