A history of aggregate demand and supply shocks for the United Kingdom, 1900 to 2016

This paper presents a history of aggregate demand and supply shocks spanning 1900 - 2016 for the United Kingdom. Sign restrictions derived from a workhorse Keynesian model are used to identify the signs of those shocks. We compare the 30 largest shocks implied by a vector autoregressive model in unemployment and inflation with the narrative historical record. Our approach provides a new perspective on well-known events in economic history. We highlight two episodes of particular interest: an aggregate supply shock in the late 1920s, which we attribute to changes in the bargaining power of labor, and positive aggregate demand shocks in the mid 1970s, which we attribute to fiscal policy.