Los Barómetros de Harvard: ¿Permitían Pedecir la Depresión de 1929?

Harvard Barometers: Did they allow to predict the Great Depression of 1929?

Ignacio Escañuela Romana ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper reviews the possibility that Harvard barometers would have enabled to predict the Great Depression. Based on data from the ABC curves in August 1929, could have been foreseen the collapse of the stock market and the dramatic fall in economic activity?. It is now accepted that Harvard barometers did not allow to predict the crisis. This paper applies the harmonic analysis, a well-known method at the time of the barometers, and a number of significance tests used in that historic moment. Harvard barometers are analysed into sinusoid curves in order to, using the projection of these curves, check their forecast. The conclusion is: Harvard statisticians could have been able to foresee the fall on speculation, as defined in the curve A, but not the fall in business conditions and money and credit. Given this result, it is questioned first whether the detected regular fluctuations are an illusory effect of the composition of ABC curves, and second if it is useful to utilize such aggregate curves. It is concluded that, although aggregation does not have any predictive advantage, it is not the source of regularity.

Keywords: Harvard barometers; Periodogram; Business Cycles Prediction. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B23 C22 C43 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/16411/1/MPRA_paper_16411.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49225/8/MPRA_paper_49225.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:pra:mprapa:16411

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().