Real Origins of the Great Depression: Monopoly Power, Unions and the American Business Cycle in the 1920s

No 712, 2007 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: If both downturns were caused by workers' improved ability to bargain collectively, then why was the Great Depression so much more severe than its precursor? According to our model, an increase in monopoly power amplifies the impact of collective bargaining on output and employment. Hence, if monopoly power were greater at the onset of the Great Depression than at the onset of the recession of 1920-21, the former would be more severe. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that monopoly power increased substantially during the Coolidge administration due to weak anti-trust enforcement.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2007/paper_712.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Real Origins of the Great Depression: Monopoly Power, Unions and the American Business Cycle in the 1920s (2008)
Working Paper: Real origins of the great depression: monopoly power, unions and the American business cycle in the 1920s (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed007:712

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2007 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Society for Economic Dynamics Marina Azzimonti Department of Economics Stonybrook University 10 Nicolls Road Stonybrook NY 11790 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().