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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- I. Introduction -- II. The Macroeconomic Effects of Wartime Fiscal Policy in the United States -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Historical War Episodes -- 2.3 The Model Economy -- 2.4 Model Calibration and Welfare Cost Calculation -- 2.5 Economic Analysis of Government Policies -- 2.6 Summary and Conclusions -- III. The Macroeconomic Effects of World War II Monetary Policy: Price Controls, Rationing, and Inflation -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Monetary Policies During U.S. Wars and Design of Counterfactual Policy -- 3.3 World War II Rationing and Price Controls -- 3.4 The Model Economy -- 3.5 Calibrating the Model with Price Controls -- 3.6 Economic Analysis of Monetary Policies -- 3.7 Summary and Conclusions -- Appendix A - Solution Technique -- Appendix B - Model Calibration -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

"We build a new quarterly dataset of aggregate hours worked consistent with standard NIPA constructs for 14 OECD countries over the last fifty years. We find that cyclical features of labor markets across countries differ markedly from the accepted empirical facts reported in the literature based on either just U.S. hours data, or based on cross-country employment data. We document that total hours worked in many OECD countries are about as volatile as output, that a relatively large fraction of labor market adjustment takes place along the intensive margin outside the United States, and that the volatility of total hours relative to output volatility has increased over time in almost all countries. We use these data to re-assess productivity and labor wedges during the Great Recession and during prior recessions. We find that the Great Recession in many OECD countries is a significant puzzle in that labor wedges are quite small, while those in the U.S. Great Recession - and those in previous European recessions - are much larger. These new data indicate that understanding cyclical labor fluctuations in OECD countries requires understanding why hours fluctuate so much more than previously considered, how and why labor markets changed so much in the last few years, why cyclical adjustment of hours per worker in countries with large firing costs is not even larger than observed, and why the Great Recession differs so much across countries"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Between 1929 and 1933, real output per adult fell over 30 percent and total factor productivity fell 18 percent.This productivity decrease is much larger than expected from just extrapolating the productivity decrease that typically occurs during recessions.This paper evaluates what factors may have caused this large decrease, including unmeasured factor utilization, changes in the composition of production, and increasing returns.I find that these factors combined explain less than one-third of the 18 percent decrease, and I conclude that the productivity decrease during the Great Depression remains a puzzle"--Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis web site