I love blogs. They allow me to see what the great minds are thinking, and consequently, makes me a better economist. It appears blogs are becoming a legitimate and prestigious means of academic publishing. Tyler Cowen's book, Discover Your Inner Economist, like many books, tries to make the author appear to be one of the leading thinkers of the day. This is how they describe Tyler on the first page of the book.
TYLER COWEN is a professor of economics at George Mason University. His is a prominent blogger at marginalrevolution.com, the world's leading economics blog....
At no place do they mention Cowen's journal articles.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Unemployment During the Great Depression
Most economists know by heart the unemployment rate during the Great Depression: 25%. Today, I learned this number is a good number, but it is debatable whether it is the best number.
The government didn't take official statistics on unemployment back then, but one person, Stanley Lebergott, worked with the government to come up with some numbers. They are good numbers, but what I didn't know is that Stanley did not count temporary jobs in emergency programs. He only counted "regular work" like a government official or a full-time job in the private sector.
Other economists have argued these temporary jobs should count, and they address unemployment by including these jobs and also looking at the number of hours worked. Doing this, unemployment goes as high as 16% and as low as 9% during the Depression. Total hours worked during the Great Depression was down by 1/5, relative to 1929 levels.
More here.
The government didn't take official statistics on unemployment back then, but one person, Stanley Lebergott, worked with the government to come up with some numbers. They are good numbers, but what I didn't know is that Stanley did not count temporary jobs in emergency programs. He only counted "regular work" like a government official or a full-time job in the private sector.
Other economists have argued these temporary jobs should count, and they address unemployment by including these jobs and also looking at the number of hours worked. Doing this, unemployment goes as high as 16% and as low as 9% during the Depression. Total hours worked during the Great Depression was down by 1/5, relative to 1929 levels.
More here.
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