Business Cycles and Depressions

Business Cycles and Depressions
Author: David Glasner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 800
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136545271

Experts define, review, and evaluate economic fluctuations Economic and business uncertainty dominate today's economic analyses. This new Encyclopedia illuminates the subject by offering 323 original articles on every major aspect of business cycles, fluctuations, financial crises, recessions, and depressions. The work of more than 200 experts, including many of the leading researchers in the field, the articles cover a broad range of subjects, including capsule biographies of leading economists born before 1920. Individual entries explore banking panics, the cobweb cycle, consumer durables, the depression of 1937-1938, Otto Eckstein, Friedrich Engels, experimental price bubbles, forced savings, lass-Steagall Act, Friedrich hagen, qualitative indicators, use of macro-econometric models, monetary neutrality, Phillips Curve, Paul Samuelson, Say's law, supply-side recessions, James Tokin, trend and random wages, Thorstein Veblen, worker-job turnover, and more.

Recessions and Depressions

Recessions and Depressions
Author: Todd A. Knoop
Publisher: Greenwood
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The economy of any nation is an intricate web of relationships among the factors determining supply and demand--and everything that affects them, from inflation to taxes to the stock market. The study of business cycles attempts to explain why economies grow and contract, experiencing periods of prosperity and pain. Consistent with the popular conception of economics as the dismal science, economists secretly long for recessions (periods of negative growth) and depressions (severe contractions), not because they enjoy their devastating impact on human welfare, but because these downturns serve as excellent laboratories for observing what happens when markets break down. Despite over two centuries of debate, no one has yet definitively unlocked the secrets of economic downturns and how they might be prevented. In Recessions and Depressions Todd Knoop traces the evolution of business cycle theory, from the classical model, which preceded the Great Depression, through the ground-breaking ideas of John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and their followers. He examines the strengths and limitations of each approach, in terms of explaining the impact of such factors as government policy, money supply, labor productivity, and wages. In the process, he presents an accessible introduction to what makes the economy tick, and offers new insights into understanding such historic events as the Great Depression, as well as more recent ones, such as the Asian meltdown in the 1990s, the financial crises in Latin America, and the U.S. recession of 2001, from which the United States is still recovering. Knoop reminds us that economists' track record in forecasting business cycles leaves much to be desired, and the quest to fully understand what causes economic downturns--and their effects on individuals and families--continues.

Business Cycle Economics

Business Cycle Economics
Author: Todd A. Knoop
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2015-02-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Presents the empirical data of business cycles and the theories that economists have developed to explain and prevent them, and considers case studies of recessions and depressions in the United States and internationally. Despite more than two centuries of debate, a definitive explanation of the causes of economic cycles still does not exist. Economists, politicians, and policymakers have argued many well-known theories as to why these peaks and slumps occur, and cyclical recessions and depressions continue in spite of the enormous intellectual reserves working to prevent them. This timely analysis presents a comprehensive overview of global economics, assessing older theories alongside of new ways of thinking to reveal the empirical methods needed to evaluate, forecast, and prevent future crises. Educator and economist Todd Knoop provides explanations of influential macroeconomic theories that have shaped modern economics, such as Keynesian economics, Neoclassical economics, Austrian economics, and New Keynesian economics. In addition, he considers case studies of specific recessions and depressions, beginning with the Great Depression through the East Asian crisis and Great Recession in Japan and culminating with a detailed examination of the European debt crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. The work concludes with a look at the insights gained from these fiscal events as well as the major questions that still remain unanswered as a result of these crises.

Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century

Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century
Author: Timothy Jerome Kehoe
Publisher:
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was a watershed for both economic thought and economic policymaking. It led to the belief that market economies are inherently unstable and to the revolutionary work of John Maynard Keynes. Its impact on popular economic wisdom is still apparent today. Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century, which uses a common framework to study sixteen depressions from the interwar period in Europe and America, as well as from more recent times in Japan and Latin America, challenges the Keynesian theory of depressions. It develops and uses a methodology for studying depressions that relies on growth accounting and the general equilibrium growth model. Different chapters in this book analyze the depressions in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the 1930s, the depressions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico in the 1980s, and recent depressions in Argentina, Finland, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland. Besides the editors themselves, the contributors are Pedro Amaral, Paul Beaudry, Raphael Bergoeing, Mirta Bugarin, Harold Cole, Juan Carlos Conesa, Mario Crucini, Roberto Ellery, Victor Gomes, Jonas Fisher, Fumio Hayashi, Andreas Hornstein, James Kahn, Patrick Kehoe, Finn Kydland, James MacGee, Lee Ohanian, Fabrizio Perri, Franck Portier, Vincenzo Quadrini, Kim Ruhl, Raimundo Soto, Arilton Teixeira, and Carlos Zarazaga.

The American Business Cycle

The American Business Cycle
Author: Robert J. Gordon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 882
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0226304590

In recent decades the American economy has experienced the worst peace-time inflation in its history and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. These circumstances have prompted renewed interest in the concept of business cycles, which Joseph Schumpeter suggested are "like the beat of the heart, of the essence of the organism that displays them." In The American Business Cycle, some of the most prominent macroeconomics in the United States focuses on the questions, To what extent are business cycles propelled by external shocks? How have post-1946 cycles differed from earlier cycles? And, what are the major factors that contribute to business cycles? They extend their investigation in some areas as far back as 1875 to afford a deeper understanding of both economic history and the most recent economic fluctuations. Seven papers address specific aspects of economic activity: consumption, investment, inventory change, fiscal policy, monetary behavior, open economy, and the labor market. Five papers focus on aggregate economic activity. In a number of cases, the papers present findings that challenge widely accepted models and assumptions. In addition to its substantive findings, The American Business Cycle includes an appendix containing both the first published history of the NBER business-cycle dating chronology and many previously unpublished historical data series.

The Return of Depression Economics

The Return of Depression Economics
Author: Paul R. Krugman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780393048391

The author of "The Age of Diminished Expectations" returns with a sobering tour of the global economic crises of the last two years.

Business Cycles in Economic Thought

Business Cycles in Economic Thought
Author: Alain Alcouffe
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317207785

Business Cycles in Economic Thought underlines how, over the time span of two centuries, economic thought interacted with cycles in a continuous renewal of theories and rethinking of policies, whilst economic actions embedded themselves into past economic thought. This book argues that studying crises and periods of growth in different European countries will help to understand how different national, political and cultural traditions influenced the complex interaction of economic cycles and economic theorizing. The editors of this great volume bring together expert contributors consisting of economists, historians of economic thought and historians of economics, to analyse crises and theories of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. This is alongside a comprehensive outlook on the most relevant advances of economic theory in France, Germany and Italy, as well as coverage of non-European countries, such as the United States. Several of the highly prestigious Villa Vigoni Trilateral Conferences formed the background for the discussions in this book. This volume is of great interest to students and academics who study history of economic thought, political economy and macroeconomics.