Supply-Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France

Jérémie Cohen-Setton (), Joshua Hausman and Johannes Wieland

No 22140, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The effects of supply-side policies in depressed economies are controversial. We shed light on this debate using evidence from France in the 1930s. In 1936, France departed from the gold standard and implemented mandatory wage increases and hours restrictions. Deflation ended but output stagnated. We present time-series and cross-sectional evidence that these supply-side policies, in particular the 40-hour law, contributed to French stagflation. These results are inconsistent both with the standard one-sector new Keynesian model and with a medium scale, multi-sector model calibrated to match our cross-sectional estimates. We conclude that the new Keynesian model is a poor guide to the effects of supply-side shocks in depressed economies.

JEL-codes: E31 E32 E65 N14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Note: DAE EFG ME
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as JÉRÉMIE COHEN-SETTON & JOSHUA K. HAUSMAN & JOHANNES F. WIELAND, 2017. "Supply-Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, vol 49(2-3), pages 273-317.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22140.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Supply‐Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France (2017)
Working Paper: Supply-Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France (2017)
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:nbr:nberwo:22140

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22140

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().