Was the Deflation of the Depression Anticipated? An Inference Using Real-time Data

Gabriel Mathy () and Herman Stekler
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Gabriel Mathy: American University

No 2017-004, Working Papers from The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting

Abstract: Theories that explain the behavior of the economy during the Depression are based on assumptions about agents’ expectations about future price trends. This paper uses an alternative methodological approach which utilizes real-time information from the Depression period to infer whether deflation was anticipated. The information includes the forecasting methodology of that time as well as projections about anticipated output that were obtained from the textual analysis of business statements, converting qualitative to quantitative data. We infer that deflation was not anticipated because agents did not expect economic output to consistently decrease.

Keywords: decision processes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-mac
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https://www2.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/2017-004.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Was the deflation of the depression anticipated? An inference using real-time data (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2017-004

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