Sticky wages and the Great Depression: evidence from the United Kingdom

How sticky were wages during the Great Depression? Although classic accounts emphasize the importance of nominal rigidity in amplifying deflationary shocks, the evidence is limited. In this paper, I calculate the degree of nominal wage rigidity in the United Kingdom between the wars using new granular data covering millions of wages. I find that nominal wages were more flexible downwards than in most modern economies, but that the frequency and magnitude of wage cuts were too low to fully offset deflatio

Uncertainty and the Great Slump

This article investigates the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the British interwar economy. The first type of evidence examined is qualitative. The historical record shows that contemporaries regularly reported the incidence and consequences of major uncertainty shocks. The second type of evidence analysed is quantitative. Based on a new index of economic policy uncertainty constructed from newspapers and vector autoregressions, the results suggest that uncertainty was an important source of economic fluctuations in Britain between the wars

Educational Leadership: Examining the Influence of Transactional and Transformational Leadership Theory in Educational Leadership Discourse

This conceptual analysis of higher educational leadership explores the influence of transactional and transformational leadership theories on 21st century leadership discourse. Applying an in-depth understanding of transactional and transformational leadership theories amassed through the work of Burns (1978), Capra (2002), McGregor (1993), Mitchell and Sackney (2009), Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, and Flowers (2005), and Wheatly (2007), this research identifies transactional leadership systemic concepts of standardization, control, and efficiency, and transformational leadership systemic concepts of collaboration, shared meaning, and change as indicators of leadership theory that lend significance within higher educational leadership literature. Utilizing a framework consisting of these systemic concepts, this research identifies essential insights within the espousal of transactional and transformational leadership theory in higher education leadership discourse

Sticky wages and the Great Depression: evidence from the United Kingdom

How sticky were wages during the Great Depression? Although classic accounts emphasise the importance of nominal rigidity in amplifying deflationary shocks, the evidence is limited. In this paper, I calculate the degree of nominal wage rigidity in the United Kingdom between the wars using new granular data covering millions of wages. I find that nominal wages changed infrequently but that wage cuts were more common than wage rises on average. Nominal wage adjustment fluctuated over time and by state, so that in 1931 amid falling output and prices more than one-third of workers received wage cuts

Is the UK recession technical or real?

What would it take for the UK’s current “technical” recession to turn into a real one?  Jason Lennard puts the UK’s economic dip in historical perspective and argues that things might not be as bad as they might seem, as long as consumers and businesses keep their nerve

European business cycles and economic growth, 1300-2000

The modern business cycle features long expansions combined with short recessions and is thus related to the emergence of sustained economic growth. It also features significant international co-movement and is therefore associated with growing market integration and globalisation. When did these patterns first appear? This paper explores the changing nature of the business cycle using historical national accounts for nine European economies between 1300 and 2000. For the sample as a whole, the modern business cycle emerged at the end of the eighteenth century

European business cycles and economic growth, 1300-2000

The modern business cycle features long expansions combined with short recessions, and is thus related to the emergence of sustained economic growth. It also features significant international co-movement, and is therefore associated with growing market integration and globalisation. When did these patterns first appear? This paper explores the changing nature of the business cycle using historical national accounts for nine European economies between 1300 and 2000. For the sample as a whole, the modern business cycle emerged at the end of the eighteenth century

Irish GDP between the Famine and the First World War : Estimates Based on a Dynamic Factor Model

A major issue in Irish economic history is the lack of historical national accounts before the interwar period. This paper addresses the gap with new annual estimates of real GDP between 1842 and 1913 using an indirect estimation technique based on a set of macroeconomic variables and a dynamic factor model. Three major results emerge from the data. First, per capita growth was faster in this period than anywhere in Europe. Second, aggregate output contracted by more than a third during the Great Famine of the 1840s, but had recovered its level and closed the output gap by the end of the decade. Third, the volatility of the business cycle fell by nearly three quarters in the second half of the sample

The macroeconomic effects of banking crises: evidence from the United Kingdom, 1750–1938

This paper analyses the macroeconomic effects of banking crises in the United Kingdom between 1750 and 1938. We construct a new annual chronology of banking crises, which we define as episodes of runs and panics combined with significant, geographically-dispersed failures and suspensions. Using a vector autoregression, we find that banking crises are associated with short, sharp and significant drops in economic growth. Using the narrative record to identify plausibly exogenous variation, we show that this finding is robust to potential endogeneity

Exchange rates, tariffs and prices in 1930s Britain

This paper investigates the degree of pass-through from import prices and tariffs to wholesale prices in interwar Britain using a new high-frequency micro data set. The main results are: (i) Pass-through from import prices and tariffs to wholesale prices was economically and statistically significant. (ii) Despite devaluation, import prices exacerbated deflation in the early 1930s because of the global slump in export prices. (iii) Rising protection, however, was a mild stimulus to prices during the shift to inflation