Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Vincent Geloso Profile picture
@VincentGeloso
Mar 6, 2023 • 9 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
Thread: New paper available at Social Science Quarterly (cc. @SSQ_Online) with @casey_joe on the myth of wartime prosperity. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ss… #econhist #econtwitter
We take inspiration from Robert Higgs' 1992 "Myth of Wartime Prosperity" in the Journal of Economic History but shift from the USA to Canada.
Higgs had found that all claims of rising living standards were ill-founded. Most of this was the result of bad statistics, bad understanding of economics and wartime distortions to the meaningfulness of prices to convert quantities into "GDP" as a measure of wellbeing
Why Canada? Because it was in the war in 1939 rather than 1941 (i.e. more time to study) and it was also avoided the physical destruction. We also apply this to WW1. So, do we find the same results as Higgs?
Yes, we do. First, when we correct GDP numbers to concentrate on civilian well-being , we find that there was far smaller increases over the course of the war than the uncorrected figures do. This is true for WW1 as well.
When we correct for the disruptive effects of price controls on the deflator, we find that the war was merely a continuation of the Great Depression.
We also find that investments (private) were not above trends during either war. Similar finding for stock market data (from the TSX)
Again, the paper is here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ss…
cc. @ccoyne1 @IndependentInst @AlexNowrasteh @danieljmitchell @bryan_caplan @ATabarrok @tylercowen @CatoEdwards @edstringham @DrPatrickNewman

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Vincent Geloso

Vincent Geloso Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @VincentGeloso

Vincent Geloso Profile picture
Jun 13
🧵While everyone is discussing the new Piketty paper, I have (with Alexis Akira Toda) another paper, now conditionally accepted at Cliometrica, that points out a key flaw in his earlier work: the Pareto Interpolation method used to make shares from tabular data is bad.Image
Here is the origin of the problem. When you do not have micro-data and only tables of income where there are intervals (0$ to 1000$ etc. -- see image), you need some way of assuming distributing within intervals and across them. The usual method is Pareto interpolation. Image
Pareto interpolation essentially does this to estimate. Its not a bad method per se. Image
Read 16 tweets
Vincent Geloso Profile picture
Apr 29
Tje🧵There it is! The paper that disentangles Cuba's socialist revolution from Soviet Aid and the US trade embargo.

TLDR: The embargo explains nothing, Soviet aid ... aided (duh), and the Revolution takes the lion's share. Image
On the graph here, we used the Maddison Project Database and synthetic control to construct Cuba without the revolution, embargo, and Soviet Aid. The red line is the synthetic (counterfactual), orange is actual Cuba but with the "flawed" GDP numbers (flawed because they are largely assumed). The green uses John Devereux's recent reconstruction of Cuba's national account. The blue subtracts Soviet Aid.Image
As one can see, Cuba massively underperforms. However, the blue line is "Revolution minus Soviet Aid plus US embargo". How do we subtract embargo? We use data on trade openness and simulate the synthetic on that. Losses in trade are then expressed to GDP via the growth-enhancing effect of trade (parametrized from other studies and some "super liberal estimations to give the embargo the biggest size possible). The answer is that there was a great deal of trade diversion with other countries such that the lost openness was modest.Image
Read 7 tweets
Vincent Geloso Profile picture
Apr 23
🧵Comme Hayek avertissait les socialistes de tous bords, il faut maintenant mettre en garde contre la tentation protectionniste, omniprésente de Trump à @francoislegault en passant par @RubaGhazalQS et @MarkJCarney. Un résumé de mon op-ed dans @LP_LaPresse Image
1/ Derrière des slogans comme « champions nationaux » ou « industries stratégiques », le protectionnisme se cache sous un vernis technique. Ca donne des platitudes comme « promouvoir des champions nationaux », « protéger nos industries stratégiques », « rapatrier les chaînes d’approvisionnement » ou encore « se protéger contre les abus des étrangers ».
2/ Mais les effets sont clairs :
Hausse des coûts pour les entreprises
Moins d’exportations
Moins d’investissements
Moins de croissance et de salaire
Read 7 tweets
Vincent Geloso Profile picture
Apr 22
🧵There is no fatality for social mobility in Canada as report suggests. In fact, there is every reason to be optimistic about the potential to create a highly mobile society. This thread is based on a half-dozen articles of mine (with co-authors)
First, it's important to distinguish between two types of social mobility: absolute and relative. Absolute mobility refers to the ability to earn more than one's parents, while relative mobility concerns the extent to which a person's income rank is independent of their parents' rank.
You could have fast economic growth (+10% a year) such that there would be insanely high absolute mobility. However, if everyone stays at the same rank (my parents are at p50=median, I am at p50=median), that growth means no relative mobility

Refs:
1) Chetty, R., Grusky, D., Hell, M., Hendren, N., Manduca, R., & Narang, J. (2017). The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940. Science, 356(6336), 398-406.
2) Chetty, R., Jackson, M. O., Kuchler, T., Stroebel, J., Hendren, N., Fluegge, R. B., ... & Wernerfelt, N. (2022). Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility. Nature, 608(7921), 108-121.
3) Chetty, R., & Hendren, N. (2018). The impacts of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility II: County-level estimates. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3), 1163-1228.
4) Deutscher, N., & Mazumder, B. (2023). Measuring intergenerational income mobility: A synthesis of approaches. Journal of Economic Literature, 61(3), 988-1036.
Read 27 tweets
Vincent Geloso Profile picture
Mar 4
🧵Last time Canada did "big" retaliatory tariffs? After Smoot-Hawley in the Great Depression. The result? Trade collapsed, and tariffs (U.S. + Canada) explain half the economic contraction from 1929 to 1934. Half.

1/N
Ref : Amaral, P., & MacGee, J. J. (2016). Trade, Relative Prices, and the Canadian Great Depression (No. 1606). Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Yes, Canada's response to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was a disaster (image). The U.S. tariff hikes in 1930 triggered a wave of retaliatory tariffs worldwide, with Canada being among the hardest hit. Image
In response, the Canadian government imposed steep retaliatory tariffs on American goods, redirecting trade toward Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth under the 1932 Ottawa Agreements. Image
Read 12 tweets
Vincent Geloso Profile picture
Feb 16
🧵New paper (with my students @PatRubenFitz and @jrhall97) forthcoming at the Scandinavian Economic History Review. It makes a simple point: there was less inequality than you think in America 1921-41 and it fell faster than you think. 1/n Image
The Great Leveling, a sharp decline in U.S. income inequality, is often dated to the 1940s. But did it start earlier? We argue that correcting for regional price differences suggests a more gradual decline beginning in the 1920s. 2/n
Standard inequality measures use nominal incomes, ignoring that regional price disparities were large and declining over time. Adjusting for local price levels reveals a different pattern of income distribution. 3/n
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(