IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/17479.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Stock Market Crash of 2008 Caused the Great Recession: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Roger E.A. Farmer

Abstract

This paper argues that the stock market crash of 2008, triggered by a collapse in house prices, caused the Great Recession. The paper has three parts. First, it provides evidence of a high correlation between the value of the stock market and the unemployment rate in U.S. data since 1929. Second, it compares a new model of the economy developed in recent papers and books by Farmer, with a classical model and with a textbook Keynesian approach. Third, it provides evidence that fiscal stimulus will not permanently restore full employment. In Farmer's model, as in the Keynesian model, employment is demand determined. But aggregate demand depends on wealth, not on income.

Suggested Citation

  • Roger E.A. Farmer, 2011. "The Stock Market Crash of 2008 Caused the Great Recession: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 17479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17479
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17479.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beyer, Andreas & Farmer, Roger E. A., 2003. "Identifying the monetary transmission mechanism using structural breaks," Working Paper Series 275, European Central Bank.
    2. Thomas A. Lubik & Frank Schorfheide, 2004. "Testing for Indeterminacy: An Application to U.S. Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 190-217, March.
    3. Martin Lettau & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 2014. "Shocks and Crashes," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 293-354.
    4. Beyer, Andreas & Farmer, Roger E.A., 2007. "Natural rate doubts," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 797-825, March.
    5. Paul Gomme & B. Ravikumar & Peter Rupert, 2011. "The Return to Capital and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 262-278, April.
    6. Farmer, Roger, 2010. "Animal Spirits, Persistent Unemployment and the Belief Function," CEPR Discussion Papers 8100, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Edmund S. Phelps, 2008. "Macroeconomics for a Modern Economy," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 52(1), pages 3-22, March.
    8. Jean-Paul Fitoussi & David Jestaz & Edmund S. Phelps & Gylfi Zoega, 2000. "Roots of the Recent Recoveries: Labor Reforms or Private Sector Forces?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(1), pages 237-311.
    9. Richard Clarida & Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 147-180.
    10. Martin Lettau & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 2004. "Understanding Trend and Cycle in Asset Values: Reevaluating the Wealth Effect on Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 276-299, March.
    11. Farmer, Roger E. A. & Plotnikov, Dmitry, 2012. "Does Fiscal Policy Matter? Blinder And Solow Revisited," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(S1), pages 149-166, April.
    12. Edmund S. Phelps, 1999. "Behind This Structural Boom: The Role of Asset Valuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 63-68, May.
    13. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    14. Olivier J. Blanchard & Lawrence H. Summers, 1986. "Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, pages 15-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Johansen, Soren, 1991. "Estimation and Hypothesis Testing of Cointegration Vectors in Gaussian Vector Autoregressive Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1551-1580, November.
    16. Milton Friedman, 1957. "Introduction to "A Theory of the Consumption Function"," NBER Chapters, in: A Theory of the Consumption Function, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Roger E.A. Farmer (ed.), 2008. "Macroeconomics in the Small and the Large," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13236.
    18. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 2006. "Were There Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 54-81, March.
    19. Blanchard, Olivier J. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1987. "Hysteresis in unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 288-295.
    20. Phelps, Edmund S, 1992. "A Review of Unemployment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 1476-1490, September.
    21. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5571 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    23. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1.
    24. Hoon, Hian Teck & Phelps, Edmund S, 1992. "Macroeconomic Shocks in a Dynamized Model of the Natural Rate of Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 889-900, September.
    25. Farmer, Roger E. A., 2014. "How the Economy Works: Confidence, Crashes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199360307.
    26. Keith M. Carlson & Roger W. Spencer, 1975. "Crowding out and its critics," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 57(Dec), pages 2-17.
    27. Farmer, Roger E.A., 2010. "How to reduce unemployment: A new policy proposal," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 557-572, July.
    28. Laurence Ball, 1999. "Aggregate demand and Long-Run Unemployment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 30(2), pages 189-252.
    29. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/5571 is not listed on IDEAS
    30. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1972. "Expectations and the neutrality of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 103-124, April.
    31. Farmer, Roger, 2010. "Expectations, Employment and Prices," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195397901.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roger Farmer, 2012. "The Stock Market Crash of 2008 Caused the Great Recession," 2012 Meeting Papers 145, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Bozani, Vasiliki & Drydakis, Nick, 2011. "Studying the NAIRU and its Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 6079, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Farmer, Roger E.A. & Nicolò, Giovanni, 2018. "Keynesian economics without the Phillips curve," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 137-150.
    4. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2010. "Phillips Curves And Unemployment Dynamics: A Critique And A Holistic Perspective," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-51, February.
    5. Farmer, Roger E.A., 2016. "The Evolution Of Endogenous Business Cycles," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 544-557, March.
    6. Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector & Snower, Dennis J., 2005. "A reappraisal of the inflation-unemployment tradeoff," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-32, March.
    7. Engelbert Stockhammer & Simon Sturn, 2012. "The impact of monetary policy on unemployment hysteresis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(21), pages 2743-2756, July.
    8. Jan Gottschalk & Ulrich Fritsche, 2005. "The New Keynesian Model and the Long-Run Vertical Phillips Curve: Does It Hold for Germany?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 521, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    9. Florin O. Bilbiie & Roland Straub, 2013. "Asset Market Participation, Monetary Policy Rules, and the Great Inflation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 377-392, May.
    10. Lucas Papademos, 2005. "Macroeconomic theory and monetary policy: the contributions of Franco Modigliani and the ongoing debate," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 58(233-234), pages 187-214.
    11. Roger E A Farmer, 2020. "The importance of beliefs in shaping macroeconomic outcomes," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 36(3), pages 675-711.
    12. Ceri Davies & Max Gillman & Michal Kejak, 2016. "Interest Rates Rules," Working Papers 1009, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Department of Economics.
    13. Lucas Papademos, 2005. "Macroeconomic theory and monetary policy: the contributions of Franco Modigliani and the ongoing debate," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 58(233-234), pages 187-214.
    14. Sujit Kapadia, 2005. "Optimal Monetary Policy under Hysteresis," Economics Series Working Papers 250, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. Paul Castillo & Carlos Montoro & Vicente Tuesta, 2005. "Inflation Premium and Oil Price Volatility," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 350, Central Bank of Chile.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5221 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Roger E.A. Farmer & Giovanni Nicolò, 2021. "Some International Evidence for Keynesian Economics Without the Phillips Curve," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 89(S1), pages 1-22, September.
    18. Baele, Lieven & Bekaert, Geert & Cho, Seonghoon & Inghelbrecht, Koen & Moreno, Antonio, 2015. "Macroeconomic regimes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 51-71.
    19. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    20. Efrem Castelnuovo & Paolo Surico, 2010. "Monetary Policy, Inflation Expectations and The Price Puzzle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(549), pages 1262-1283, December.
    21. Givens, Gregory E. & Salemi, Michael K., 2015. "Inferring monetary policy objectives with a partially observed state," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 190-208.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17479. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.