Some International Aspects of Business Cycles: Neisser, Haberler and Modern Open Economy Macroeconomics

Hans-Michael Trautwein

No 46 / 2015, ZenTra Working Papers in Transnational Studies from ZenTra - Center for Transnational Studies

Abstract: Despite the transnational character of the Great Depression of the years 1929-33, there are few works in the inter-war literature that deal in depth with the propagation of business cycles across national borders and systemic risks of depression in the world economy. Two notable exceptions are Hans Neisser’s monograph on Some International Aspects of the Business Cycle (1936) and chapter 12 in Gottfried Haberler’s Prosperity and Depression (1937), which carries the heading “International Aspects of Business Cycles”. Both works differ substantially from each other and from the modern way of thinking about international business cycles in Open Economy Macroeconomics. This paper argues that Neisser’s and Haberler’s approaches provide more straightforward routes to capturing some of the transnational aspects of the recent Great Recession (of 2008/09) than the modern standard approach. At the first stage, the two older approaches are presented and compared with each other. At the second stage, they are contrasted with the current state of open-economy macroeconomics, as represented by Uribe & Schmitt-Grohé (2014), a textbook in the making that puts international macro in a business cycle framework. Since Haberler’s account accentuates the role of transport costs, imperfections of capital markets and monetary policies, it can be used as a catalogue of criteria for checking what modern attempts to connect international trade, international finance and economic growth have got (back) in sight. More importantly, both Haberler’s and Neisser’s approach also serve to identify what has been lost out of sight.

Keywords: international business cycles; open economy macroeconomics; Hans Neisser; Gottfried Haberler (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B22 E32 F41 F44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2557938 First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: SOME INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF BUSINESS CYCLES: NEISSER, HABERLER, AND MODERN OPEN ECONOMY MACROECONOMICS (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zen:wpaper:46

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