Harvests and Business Cycles in Nineteenth-Century America

Joseph H. Davis, Christopher Hanes and Paul Rhode

No 14686, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Most major American industrial business cycles from around 1880 to the First World War were caused by fluctuations in the size of the cotton harvest due to economically exogenous factors such as weather. Wheat and corn harvests did not affect industrial production; nor did the cotton harvest before the late 1870s. The unique effect of the cotton harvest in this period can be explained as an essentially monetary phenomenon, the result of interactions between harvests, international gold flows and high-powered money demand under America's gold-standard regime of 1879-1914.

JEL-codes: E32 N11 N51 N61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his and nep-mac
Note: DAE
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Published as Joseph H. Davis & Christopher Hanes & Paul W. Rhode, 2009. "Harvests and Business Cycles in Nineteenth-Century America," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1675-1727, November.

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