The German Business Cycle in the 1920's
A Comment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3735622 |
|---|---|
| Authors | T Balderston (University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1977 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 159 |
| Publication date | 1977-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2595503 |
| OpenAlex | W4253861484 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 4 |
Both Prof. Temin and Dr Falkus differ from the traditional historiography in that they regard the behaviour of inventory investment as a major component in the explanation of this recession. Temin, however, rules out monetary determinants of the rate of inventory investment, while Falkus rehabilitates them. I believe that in this period, inventory investment is something of a red herring, introduced by defects in the statistical series used. Temin relies on Hoffmann's estimates of the annual rate of inventory investment in mining, manufacturing, trade, and the artisan sector, deflated constant (I 9 I 3) prices.3 Hoffmann deflates by applying the annual average of the official wholesale price index cumulating estimates of inventories at the year-end. I think his deflator is faulty for two main reasons. Firstly, the construction of the underlying current value data4 (based chiefly on balance-sheet analysis) provides little justification for the use of annual average prices. In somewhat analogous cases, Abramovitz and Feinstein use only the spread of prices during the last four five months of the year.5 Secondly, since in this discussion the concern is expressly with inventory investment outside agriculture, the commodity weighting of the official wholesale price index is inappropriate. It gives unduly heavy weighting agricultural prices, since it is designed to measure the purchasing power of the circulating capital of the entire economy.6 I have prepared alternative estimates of non-agricultural inventory investment at constant prices. I used the same sources as Hoffmann but proceeded by deflating separately the current value estimates of inventories in each branch of trade, industry, etc. by an
Archaeology · Business · Business cycle · Economics · Geography · German · Keynesian economics · Economic Theory and Institutions · European Monetary and Fiscal Policies · European Socioeconomic and Political Studies · German Economic Analysis & Policies · History
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,19 |
| Citation span | 1983 - 2022 (40) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |