TY  - JOUR
AU  - Romer,Christina D.
TI  - The Prewar Business Cycle Reconsidered:  New Estimates of Gross NationalProduct, 1869-1918
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1969
PY  - 1986
Y2  - July 1986
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1969
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1969.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christina D. Romer
Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
549 Evans Hall, #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/642-4317
Fax: 510/642-6615
E-Mail: cromer@econ.berkeley.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -