NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

NBER Publications by Christopher Hanes

Contact and additional information for this authorAll publicationsWorking Papers only

Working Papers and Chapters

January 2009Harvests and Business Cycles in Nineteenth-Century America
with Joseph H. Davis, Paul W. Rhode: w14686
Most major American industrial business cycles from around 1880 to the First World War were caused by fluctuations in the size of the cotton harvest due to economically exogenous factors such as weather. Wheat and corn harvests did not affect industrial production; nor did the cotton harvest before the late 1870s. The unique effect of the cotton harvest in this period can be explained as an essentially monetary phenomenon, the result of interactions between harvests, international gold flows and high-powered money demand under America's gold-standard regime of 1879-1914.
November 1994Historical Macroeconomics and American Macroeconomic History
with Charles W. Calomiris: w4935
What can macroeconomic history offer macroeconomic theorists and macroeconometricians? Macroeconomic history offers more than longer time series or special `controlled experiments.' It suggests an historical definition of the economy, which has implications for macroeconometric methods. The defining characteristic of the historical view is its emphasis on `path dependence': ways in which the cumulative past, including the history of shocks and their effects, change the structure of the economy. This essay reviews American macroeconomic history to illustrate its potential uses and draw out methodological implications. `Keynesian' models can account for the most obvious cycle patterns in all historical periods, while `new classical' models cannot. Nominal wage rigidity was important his...

Contact and additional information for this authorAll publicationsWorking Papers only

 
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