Food for thought! Is this author offering more than trivia or well known tidbits?
Apparently, the author Tyler Goodspeed does not have an entry on Google Scholar (as of 8/4/2026, see screen shot below). Not a good sign!
That wars or post war periods or periods of great societal upheaval trigger booms or recessions (e.g. Great Depression) is a very old hat in economics!
The author claims "In fact, recessions have relatively little effect on the economy over time". Really! What is communism/socialism all about? Criticizing capitalism and its booms and busts! How many big government laws followed severe busts in industrialized countries to manage and control the economy?
That the author goes back 400 years in history is daring! What economic/statistical data do we really have going this far back in history. The author appears to prefer the unemployment rate for this argument. When were the first unemployment rate data published for industrialized countries? According to Google Search/AI for the UK first in 1888 and Germany in 1903.
The author also makes some very strong assumptions about economies: "several empirically testable and falsifiable hypotheses", which are dubious.
Caveat: I am not familiar with Tyler Goodspeed nor his publications.
"... economic historian Goodspeed discusses what triggers recessions and why war is the most prolific “serial killer” of economic expansions over the last 400 years. ...
Contrary to popular thinking, these “busts” are not the inevitable result of flaws in the economic “booms” that immediately precede them, and they’re not cyclical, or necessary, course correctives. In fact, recessions have relatively little effect [???] on the economy over time compared to periods of growth, says the book’s author, Tyler Goodspeed ...
In reality, when I analyzed these 132 recessions going back to 1700, all of those hypotheses are rejected by the data [???]. All of them. ..."
Book cover
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