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This article presents several research papers related to banks and asset markets during war and depression. "The Great Banks' Depression: Deposit Withdrawals in the German Crisis of 1931," uses monthly balance-sheet data of all major German credit banks, and further analyze deposit withdrawals and bank failures in the German banking and currency crisis of 1931. "International Financial Crisis Contagion in the Interwar Period," examines international financial markets and the links between them using a newly hand-collected data set for more than 300 company stocks, encompassing weekly equity-market observations for 13 countries.

This paper investigates whether the size and book-to-market factors of Fama and French (1993) proxy for the risks associated with business cycle fluctuations. We find that changes in default spread (Δdef) and changes in term spread (Δterm) capture the systematic differences in average returns along the size and book-to-market dimensions in the way that the Fama-French factors do: small stock portfolios have higher loadings on Δdef than large stock portfolios, while high book-to-market portfolios have higher loadings on Δterm than low book-to-market portfolios. Furthermore, in the presence of Δdef and Δterm, the Fama-French factors are superfluous in explaining the size and book-to-market effects. The results suggest that the size and value premiums are compensation for higher exposure to the risks related to changing credit market conditions and interest rates proxied by Δdef and Δterm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the changes to the Fund's bilateral surveillance policy in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–09 asking about the factors that caused the quick and deep shift to a systemic surveillance approach. In answering this question, the paper argues that the causes of the quick and deep transformation of IMF surveillance lie in the preceding two decades of incremental accumulation of knowledge and small transformations in policy instruments and organizational practices. In identifying the causes of present policy choices in the lessons drawn from past experience, the paper provides an example of lagged learning because the lessons drawn from the 1990s emerging market crises exerted their full impact only as a response to the global financial crisis. These findings therefore contribute to the literature that aims at showing the importance of temporality and process sequencing to explain policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the 2004 Economic History Association Meetings. Some of the meetings are: War Will Get You There; Credit and Wealth Unterdenlinden; Civil Action; Bombs, Germs and Invaders; Managing Political Uncertainty; Institutions of Unequal Pay; Growth and Conflict; Economic History Society Annual Conference Call for Academic Papers.

Timely availability of relevant economic information is from the users' point of view a crucial pre-requirement for effective economic and monetary policy and for accurate analysis and reliable forecasting. Unfortunately, official statistics are not always able to meet such needs. For this reason, particularly over the recent past, advanced statistical and econometric techniques have been used to complement the classical production process in order to increase the timeliness of the relevant economic information. Furthermore, official statistics do not necessarily show explicitly relevant phenomena such as the cyclical situation and the location of turning points. In order to fill this gap, indicators have to be built up to extract such relevant signals and to make them available in an easily readable and comprehensible way to all users. This paper gives a general overview of ongoing Eurostat projects, aiming to supply timely information to all users based on transparent and statistically sound methodologies. In particular this paper presents results related to the construction of flash estimates in order to increase the timeliness of official statistics as well as the construction of a timely statistical system for business cycle analysis based on a set of turning points indicators and cyclical estimates. The results obtained so far are very encouraging, especially in terms of the overall quality of the estimates and the statistical robustness of the proposed methods. Nevertheless, some improvements, particularly related to the precision of flash estimates, are needed, especially under an uncertain economic situation and regime changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current financial crisis has raised queries about the adequacy of the present regulatory regime. Whilst the immediate priority may be to plug the obvious holes in the system, there are some long-term generic problems with almost any system of financial regulation. This paper explores one such concern, i.e. the boundary problem. This arises because effective regulation, one that actually bites, is likely to penalise those within the regulated sector, relative to those just outside, causing substitution flows towards the unregulated. This boundary problem impacts on many proposals, such as 'narrow banking' and my own, with Avinash Persaud, for state and time-varying capital adequacy requirements. The question of how and where to set the boundary is considered. Such boundaries will always be criticised as leading to disintermediation, competitive inequality (no level-playing-field), inefficiency and higher spreads and borrowing rates; and such criticisms will be valid up to a point. The paper ends by discussing how best to respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boquist, Racette, and Schlarbaum [3] and Livingston [6] show that a security's systematic risk may be expressed as a function of Its duration. These results have led to research examining the role of duration in explaining systematic risk, but Lanstein and Sharpe [5] indicate that Livingston's expression relies on the implicit assumption that extra-market covariances between securities are insignificant. Lanstein and Sharpe argue that such an assumption is unwarranted. They find a significant negative relationship between extra-market covariances and differences in duration between paired samples of common stock. Their paper suggests that duration may be associated with unsystematic risk and that any relation between duration and systematic risk is more complex than implied in [3] and [6]. Livingston's expression for beta as a function of duration is sensitive to interest rate fluctuations. In particular, a shift: in the interest rate level causes a shift in beta, which, if not incorporated into an empirical analysis, causes residuals, or apparent extra-market returns, to have the properties observed by Lanstein and Sharpe. By using Livingston's formulation to analyze beta instability, this note gives an alternative explanation for the empirical results obtained by Lanstein and Sharpe and takes a step toward integrating approaches to the interest rate sensitivity of beta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk-sensitive capital requirements, such as those established in Basel 2/3, and loan loss provisions based on incurred losses or on short-horizon expected losses, increase procyclicality in the banking system. They could, therefore, contribute to fuelling credit bubbles in good times, as rising risks are not properly covered either with capital or provisions, and credit crunches in bad times, as requirements are sharply increased to compensate for the former undercapitalisation and under-provisioning, and banks respond by cutting credit to households and firms. This paper shows that the procyclicality of current and envisaged capital requirements and loan loss provisions is a serious concern. But, at the same time, it can be dealt with using countercyclical macroprudential tools, first, by smoothing minimum capital requirements using a very simple and intuitive formula based on GDP growth and, secondly, by using forward-looking provisions such as the Spanish dynamic provisions, a working macroprudential mechanism for more than a decade and a full lending cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper is in the spirit of Rex Bergstrom's interests and research in cyclical growth models and his meticulous attention to underlying data series. We develop a new quarterly real GDP series for post-World War II New Zealand, derive a new "benchmark" set of classical business cycle turning points, and establish nonparametric classical cycle characteristics. Markov-switching models, estimated by Gibbs-sampling methods, are used to derive mean growth rate and volatility regimes and to add to existing knowledge. The resulting properties, involving cycle asymmetries, volatility, diversity and duration dependence, and differing mean growth rate and volatility regimes, can be used to underpin a next generation of cyclical growth models for New Zealand, in the Bergstrom tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I evaluate the challenges related to the European Commission's output gap method of calculating the structural budgetary position, and assess its bottom-up alternatives in the EU's fiscal framework using the Finnish data for the years 1984–2014. The results reinforce the impression of the limited capacity of the output gap method to predict cyclical changes in real time and suggest that using the output gap method to steer fiscal policy tends to lead to a procyclical policy (stimulus in upturns and austerity in downturns). The bottom-up assessment methods that are based on discretionary fiscal policy measures appear to work better, and using them to steer fiscal policy could make the policy more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

And accordingly, when the second lockdown (5 November to 2 December 2020) and the third lockdown (5 January - to be phased out on 12 April, 17 May and 21 June 2021) were declared, even though the economy proved to be increasingly resilient, fiscal policy was still asked to deal with the return of the virus and the mutated, highly infectious strain B117 of SARS-CoV-2.It is then a question for the Bank of England to decide whether that quantum of risk and resource transfers undertaken by fiscal policy require any changes in the stance of monetary and financial policies (Tucker, [50]). The new plan is required to satisfy ideals of social justice much higher than we have been attaining without it. i I J. M. Keynes, How to Pay for the War (1940) i Towards better fiscal policies Modern representative democracy is faced with the Whiggish directive to improve living standards with the main lever in possession of any government being its fiscal policy. Lazarowicz ([35]) also highlights the interactions between fiscal policy and monetary policy within the context of a simple model of monetary and fiscal policy coordination and suggests that optimal fiscal policy not only must flex in the changing economic conditions, but also condition on monetary policy. That fiscal policy framework set two clear objectives for fiscal policy: to achieve sustainable public financess and to support the effectiveness of monetary policy. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We investigate economic resilience of UK regions before, during and after the 2007/8 global financial crisis. We date business cycle turning points in real output, employment and productivity to assess the resilience dimensions of resistance, recovery and renewal and rank the economic resilience of regions in a resilience scorecard. Our empirical results reveal that the business cycle in productivity has not returned to its pre-recession peak level for Yorkshire and the Humber and the employment level has not recovered in Scotland. The resilience scorecard ranks the South East as the most resilient region with Northern Ireland the least resilient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Executive Summary: The UK economy faces more than usually uncertain times. Outside the European Union, and in an increasingly challenging global environment characterised by ageing populations, climate change, populism, protectionism, and more, the country needs to chart a new course. This may well require policymakers to consider unconventional approaches to monetary and fiscal policy and, at the very least argues for important modifications of the current policy regime, including the autonomous mandate of the Bank of England. At some point, there will be a major slowdown in economic activity. Yet the Bank of England has very little leeway to respond by cutting interest rates, and it has already adopted an armoury of unorthodox tools that may be decreasing in effectiveness. More radical monetary approaches would be likely to be politically controversial; and are not without risks. In these circumstances it would be a mistake to rely solely, or even largely, on monetary policy to maintain demand. It would be better to conduct monetary and fiscal policy in tandem, and for discretionary fiscal policy to be required to play a much more active role in demand management than hitherto. This would, for example, imply major extension of the automatic stabilisers and efforts better to calibrate discretionary initiatives with the business cycle. But given the long-term pressures on the public finances, more fundamental changes in the structure of spending and taxation are needed, along with a redrawing of fiscal rules and targets, under independent budgetary oversight. The current, historically low, share in GDP of public spending is itself unsustainable in light of the demand for services of an ageing population; plans should be made to raise it closer to the European average. In the most extreme circumstances it might become necessary to waive the fiscal rules entirely and for the Bank of England directly to underwrite fiscal stimulus in order to sustain aggregate demand. It would be wise for the authorities to consider the options in detail now, while the environment is still relatively stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research posits that market imperfections and the lack of institutions that protcc: investor interests create a divergence between the cost of internal and external funds, thereby constraining firms' ability to fund investment projects through external financing. Financial constraints force firms to manage their cash flows to finance potentially profitable projects. A related stream of research documents that financial constraints due to costly external financing are more pronounced in underdeveloped financial markets. We examine the influence of financial development on the demand for liquidity by focusing on how financial development affects the sensitivity of firms' cash holdings to their cash flows. Using firm-level data for 35 countries covering about 12,782 firms for the years 1994-2002, we find the sensitivity of cash holdings to cash flows decreases with financial development. We also consider additional implications of firms' cash flow sensitivity of cash with respect to firm size and business cycles. Overall, we provide new cross-country evidence of the role of financial development on financial constraints.

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As the tenth anniversary of EMU is approaching, a debate is underway as to whether the single currency has promoted or hindered convergence among the countries of the Euro Area. On the one hand, there is wide agreement that asymmetric shocks have subsided after the creation of the single currency, but if one moves to examine the catching-up process between the more and less affluent countries of the Euro Area, the evidence is waning. Another worrying development in the Euro Area is the emergence of unprecedented current account deficits in the southern Euro Area countries, while the northern ones enjoy substantial surpluses. To counter these new imbalances, new well-framed policy priorities are required in the Euro Area that put more emphasis on convergence and competitiveness than before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Gian Luigi Mazzi and Gaetana Montana on the role played by research Eurostat to meet the demand for a timely economic data, one by Jennifer Castle, Nicholas Fawcett and David Hendry on the reasons for nowcasting, and one by Domenico Giannone, Lucrezia Reichlin and Saverio Simonelli on the strength of green shoots of economic recovery.

The article presents the Editor's Report for the fiscal year 2004-2005. The past year, he stressed, the "Journal of Economic History" experienced stability with Knick Harley squaring off at University of Oxford and Jermey Atack coming in stride at Vanderbilt University. In addition, the report sports figure and tables that show a continuing increase in the number of submissions.

Recent work across a wide range of issues in political economy as well as in American, comparative, and international politics tries to explain the inefficient use of power--revolution, civil wars, high levels of public debt, international conflict, and costly policy insulation--in terms of commitment problems. This paper shows that a common mechanism is at work in a number of these diverse studies. This common mechanism provides a more general formulation of a type of commitment problem that can arise in many different substantive settings. The present analysis then formalizes this mechanism as an "inefficiency condition" that ensures that all of the equilibria of a stochastic game are inefficient. This condition has a natural substantive interpretation: Large, rapid changes in the actors' relative power (measured in terms of their minmax payoffs) may cause inefficiency [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the start date of the Great Recession across OECD countries. The Sahm Rule identifies the start of recession in the US to the beginning of 2008 but in most other OECD countries it identifies the start after that identified by two successive falls in quarterly GDP. We establish our own rule for predicting recession using the fear of unemployment series to predict recession. We show a 10-point rise in the series compared to its previous 12 month low predicted the onset of the Great Recession in both the United States and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emissions are directly linked to economic output and consequently subject to business cycle fluctuations. The present study analyses the interactions between climate policies and business cycles through the lens of a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. We compare a static cap-and-trade policy with a dynamically adjusting policy in terms of macroeconomic stabilisation, welfare and emissions price dynamics. The results of the quantitative evaluation suggest that a constant policy leads to lower aggregate volatility but is associated with larger welfare costs. In contrast, under the dynamic policy emissions prices and labour markets display less variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the recent literature on the relationship between SMEs, financial deepening and economic development. While a large SME sector is not associated with faster economic growth or poverty alleviation, financial deepening can have a pro-growth and pro-poor impact by alleviating SMEs’ financing constraints, enabling firm entry and entrepreneurship, and better resource allocation. It is important to differentiate between different segments of the SME population, most critically between subsistence micro entrepreneurs and transformational entrepreneurs. This paper also discusses the importance of market structure, competition and regulations for SMEs and their access to finance over the business cycle and during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Alternative measures of the UK output gap are considered for 1984-2007. The real-time series is strongly affected by the rolling-time estimation of the trend, and produces a picture of the business cycle which is not consistent with contemporary perceptions of the large fluctuations of the late 1980s and early 1990s. A new, 'nearly-real', measure developed here may be better for estimating historical reaction functions. In the context of the current recession, none of these mechanically derived measures of the output gap are useful. Policymakers should make careful estimates of the likely fall in potential output on the basis of other information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides main statistical techniques to measure business cycles in Great Britain. Sensitivity of business cycle inference to measurement; Commitment of the government to avoid deficit in current account over the cycle; Identification of the turning points of the cycle.

Focuses on a study which examined the revised estimates of gross national product and unemployment in the United States before 1929. Data on labor force, employment and unemployment market; Details of business cycles; Discussion on industrial production.

Explores the existence of Kondratieff cyles or long waves in Australia's economic development. Explanation given by economist Walt W. Rostow; Factors that increased interest in long-wave theories of economic activity.

Deals with issues concerning macroeconomics. Root of the dichotomy between premodern and industrial macroeconomy; Association of natural disturbances such as weather with premodern macroeconomic fluctuations.

Discusses a study made on the political business cycle issue in the United States during the 1969-1972 period. Root of the political business cycle phrase; Paths taken by research on the issue; Assertions made on the issue; Shortcomings of the study.

Focuses on changes in household balance sheets during the Great Depression in the United States as transmission mechanisms which were important in the decline of aggregate demand. Link between balance sheet movements and aggregate demand; Approach used to analyze business cycles during the period of depression.

The article presents a commentary to an investigation by Gerald H. Kramer of the possible effect of macroeconomic fluctuations on voting behavior in the U.S. His research found that only economic fluctuations over the year preceding the election had any effect and voters paid no attention to earlier years. Kramer's results were questioned by researchers who had failed to replicate their findings with cross-sectional survey data.

Although GDP grew in the first quarter by 3.1 per cent (at an annualised rate), repeating the relatively strong growth seen in the first three quarters of 2018, our expectation continues to be that output growth in the US economy will slow. With the Federal Reserve having been criticised by President Trump for raising rates and not letting the economy "run hot" at a time when inflation has been below the 2 per cent target, the President has criticised the Federal Reserve for not reducing interest rates further and faster. With a downturn in economic growth and inflation well below its target, the European Central Bank (ECB) responded in September by reducing the deposit rate by 0.1 percentage points to -0.5 per cent and renewing quantitative easing. The Monetary Policy Committee (Copom) believes that inflation expectations are well-anchored and that underlying inflation, including the components most sensitive to the business cycle and monetary policy, is running at reasonable levels. [Extracted from the article]

The current economic and preceding financial crises seem to provide evidence in favour of the self-destruction thesis of capitalism. Responses to the crisis have been polarised. Some suggest that regulatory changes are all that is needed. Others suggest the need to change the economic system by developing a new global economic ethic. The first is too limited, the second too Utopian. This article suggests that a Maclntyrean virtue ethics approach provides both a more convincing diagnosis ofthe problem and leads to a more workable prescription. First, we need to understand the internal contradictions ofthe tradition that has developed of how to 'do' business. Then we need the virtues to be exercised inside practices and institutions. But virtue itself needs to be institutionalised; we need an appropriate governance of virtue in organizations. Even though governance is usually taken to 'crowd out' virtue, this article proposes an approach to governance that 'crowds in' virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the empirical finance literature, findings on the risk-return tradeoff in excess stock market returns are ambiguous. In this study, I develop a new qualitative response (QR)-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity-in-mean (GARCH-M) model combining a probit model for a binary business cycle indicator and a regime-switching GARCH-M model for excess stock market return with the business cycle indicator defining the regime. Estimation results show that there is statistically significant variation in the U.S. excess stock returns over the business cycle. However, consistent with the conditional intertemporal capital asset pricing model (ICAPM), there is a positive risk-return relationship between volatility and expected return independent of the state of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We find that the market’s recent cross-sectional dispersion in stock returns is positively related to the subsequent value book-to-market premium and negatively related to the subsequent momentum premium. The partial relation between return dispersion (RD) and the subsequent value and momentum premiums remains strong when controlling for macroeconomic state variables suggested by the literature. Our findings are consistent with recent theoretical insights and empirical evidence that suggest that the market’s RD may serve as a leading countercyclical state variable, that the value premium is countercyclical, and that the momentum premium is procyclical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a large panel of UK manufacturing firms over the period 2000–9, we consider how firms responded during the most recent financial crisis, estimating models for export market participation decisions and firm growth and survival. The results indicate that financial variables are highly important in predicting export market entry, especially in the midst of the global financial crisis. With respect to firm growth and survival, we find that starters and continuous exporters are more likely to perform well in and out of the crisis than non-exporters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights from the article: After a period of relatively strong GDP growth in 2017 and early 2018, global output growth has slowed. While many emerging economies are continuing to show steady economic growth, slowing GDP growth in three economic areas that comprise around half of global GDP (USA, China and the Euro Area) is likely to have a longer reach through trade effects. The mix of slightly stronger GDP growth than anticipated in the first quarter for advanced economies and signs of weaker GDP growth in the second quarter have led us to mark down our global GDP growth forecast for 2019 from 3.4 per cent to 3¼ per cent. The indirect exposure to US tariffs through global value chains could be greater than the impact from directly affected automobile exports for many European economies and especially for economies like Hungary or Slovakia where, in addition to high indirect exposure, the automobile sector is large relative to the size of the economy.

Highlights from the article: Monetary policy has some room to respond if inflation expectations and labour costs are anchored (and also thought to be anchored by policymakers) at a level that is consistent with the medium-term 2 per cent inflation target. A number of EU measures, for instance regarding financial services, are explicitly temporary and serve the purpose of allowing EU importers to switch from UK to EU suppliers. This option would not be available in a scenario where wage growth picks up and policymakers believed that inflation expectations would be dislodged if monetary policy did not actively and immediately offset an EU exit-related spike in inflation. An active monetary policy response to inflation, may limit inflation volatility but will also imply a much larger short-run fall in output, as a consequence.

Five years after the financial crisis, the global economy remains unbalanced and many of the advanced countries are still struggling to return to robust, sustainable growth. Taking a historical perspective, I argue that this predicament reflects a failure to adjust to profound changes in the economic landscape, which have given rise to the (re-)emergence of major financial booms and busts. The economic developments that really matter now take much longer to unfold – economic time has slowed down relative to calendar time – and yet the planning horizons of economic agents have shortened. The key problems arise from the cumulative effects of past decisions on stocks, and yet these effects are treated as short-term flow issues. The risk is that instability will become entrenched in the system. Policy needs to adjust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Technology shocks and declining productivity have been advanced as important factors driving the Great Depression in the United States, based on real business cycle theory. We estimate an improved measure of technology for interwar manufacturing, using data from the U.S. census reports. There is clear evidence of increasing returns to scale and we find no statistical proof that technology shocks led to changes in hours worked or other inputs. This contradicts a key prediction of real business cycle theory. We find that increasing returns to scale are not due to market power but to labor and capital hoarding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 1890 and 2004 total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the United States has been strongly procyclical, while labor productivity growth has been mildly so. This article argues that these results are not simply a statistical artifact, as Mathew Shapiro and others have argued. Procyclicality resulted principally from demand shocks interacting with capital services which are relatively invariant over the cycle. This account contrasts with explanations emphasizing labor hoarding as well as those offered by the real business cycle (RBC) program, in which TFP shocks (deviations from trend) are themselves the cause of cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overview is provided of the issues raised in the recent literature on the use of reaI-time data in the context of nowcasting and forecasting UK macroeconomic events. The ideas are illustrated through two specific applications using UK real-time data available over 1961-2006 and providing probability forecasts that could have been produced in real time over the past twenty years. In the first, we consider the reliability of first-release data on the components of UK aggregate demand by looking at forecasts of the probabiIity of substantial data revisions. In the second, we consider the estimation of the output gap, illustrating the uncertainty surrounding its measurement through density forecasts and focusing on its interpretation in terms of inflationary pressure through an event probability forecast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines key questions about the development of Pennsylvania's mid-nineteenth-century iron industry. The analysis is based on new data and exhaustive examination of previously underutilized sources within the framework of a geographic information system (GIS). Hypotheses are tested on the timing of adoption of mineral-fuel technologies across the state; the temporal relationships between investment in ironworks, business cycles, and tariff policy; the substitutability of different types and qualities of iron; how transport costs affected iron prices; and the geographical segmentation of iron markets in the antebellum period. The findings reveal complex and dynamic patterns of regional economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the short-run periods that can be derived from the GDP per capital series for Argentina between 1875 and 1990, after extracting its segmented long-run trend using time series techniques and unit root tests. It also studies the economic forces which, from the aggregate demand side, might provide an explanation for this behaviour. This mode of operating makes it possible to identify successive cycles more accurately than in previous studies. A high level of agreement is observed between the results of this study and arguments in the literature regarding the causes shaping these short-run periods: the analysis demonstrates that exports were the key factor until 1932 while after this year consumption and investment came to predominate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do trade-transmitted international business cycles affect the timing of national elections? This article shows that export expansions do not differ substantively from booms in aggregate output in inviting opportunistic governments to call elections, especially as their terms mature. Further analysis confirms two ancillary implications of this relationship: (a) that clusters of countries tend to hold elections in periods of international economic expansion and (b) that national election cycles, much like business cycles, have become more correlated over time, most prominently in Europe. The findings in this article raise implications for continued economic integration: freer movement of goods, services and capital may imply more correlated business cycles and, by extension, election cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article gives an account of the developments in the Dominican Republic's economy from the 1990s boom to the crisis of the new millennium, focusing on the monetary and exchange rate dynamics behind that transition. It is argued that the liberalisation of interest rates in the 1990s, together with an appreciated real exchange rate and weak bank supervision, led to the dollarisation of the banking system. These and other structural imbalances exacerbated the impact of a series of adverse shocks on the economy at the beginning of the millennium, including a banking crisis costing approximately 20 per cent of gross domestic product in 2003. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a compromise estimate of the German Net National Product for the years 185 1-1913 based on four estimates from Hoffmann (1965) and Hoffmann and Müller (1959) by recalculating industrial production, investment, home and foreign capital income. Because differences remain during the early decades, we compute a weighted average compromise series. Economic activity is shown to be higher than the older estimates suggest. The average growth rate is lower. The average business cycle lasted five years, with high volatility in the early decades. The typical Gründerzeit pattern of boom then prolonged recession after 1873 can not be confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians face the problem of how to write the history of the eighteenth-century British empire. How can the history of Britain and the history of its empire be brought together? Recent research has demonstrated the value of employing the idea of networks to describe the interrelatedness of empire. In the history of science and economic history such a notion has been quite thoroughly articulated, particularly in relation to the exchange of botanical knowledge and the transaction of goods. Here it is argued that conceiving of empire as a set of networks through which knowledge and ideas were exchanged, trust was negotiated, goods were traded, and people travelled is an avenue worth pursuing in the project to write the history of the eighteenth-century British empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]