Fiscal Policy and Employment in Interwar Britain: Some Evidence from a New Model.

This paper presents a new model of the British economy in the interwar period. The model is used for counterfactual simulations which are designed to shed light on major controversies over economic policy. In this way the claim made by Henderson and Keynes that expenditure on public works could have reduced unemployment can be tested against the opposing Treasury View which emphasized the importance of crowding-out effects. The effect of a change in the replacement ratio is examined, which is relevant to the controversy on the extent to which unemployment was induced by the benefit system and also the determinants of the natural rate of unemployment in the interwar period

Fiscal Policy and Employment in Interwar Britain: Some Evidence from a New Model.

This paper presents a new model of the British economy in the interwar period. The model is used for counterfactual simulations which are designed to shed light on major controversies over economic policy. In this way the claim made by Henderson and Keynes that expenditure on public works could have reduced unemployment can be tested against the opposing Treasury View which emphasized the importance of crowding-out effects. The effect of a change in the replacement ratio is examined, which is relevant to the controversy on the extent to which unemployment was induced by the benefit system and also the determinants of the natural rate of unemployment in the interwar period. Copyright 1995 by Royal Economic Society.

Unemployment in Interwar Germany: An Analysis of the Labor Market, 1927 1936

This article contributes to the debate on the causes of unemployment in interwar Germany. It applies the Layard-Nickell model of the labor market to interwar data. The results indicate that demand shocks, combined with nominal inertia in the labor market, were important in explaining unemployment. Real wage pressures due to procedures for wage determination were a major influence on unemployment, but were partly offset by movements in other supply-side variables, such as the replacement ratio and the pricing policy of cartels. Demand- and supply-side variables were mutually reinforcing in the Great Depression and in the recovery under the Nazis.