The Great Depression in Belgium from a Neo-Classical Perspective

Abstract

This paper casts the Belgian Great Depression of the 1930s within a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework. Results show that a total factor productivity shock within a standard real business cycle model is unsatisfactory. Introducing war expectations in the baseline model produces little improvement. Given the evidence on sticky wages put forward by historians, it shows that a simple DGSE model with sticky wages à la Taylor improves on the results.Great Depression; Belgium; sticky wages; dynamic stochastic general equilibrium