The Great Depression of the 1930s: Lessons for Today

by Nicholas Crafts (Editor), Peter Fearon (Editor)

Overview

Understanding the Great Depression has never been more relevant than in today's economic crisis. This edited collection provides an authoritative introduction to the Great Depression as it affected the advanced countries in the 1930s. The contributions are by acknowledged experts in the field and cover in detail the experiences of Britain, Germany, and, the United States, while also seeing the depression as an international disaster. The crisis entailed the collapse of the international monetary system, sovereign default, and banking crises in many countries in the context of the most severe downturn in western economic history. The responses included protectionism, regulation, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and the New Deal. The relevance to current problems facing Europe and the United States is apparent.

The chapters are written at a level which will be comprehensible to advanced undergraduates in economics and history while also being a valuable source of reference for policy makers grappling with the current economic crisis. The book will be of interest to modern macroeconomists and students of interwar history alike and seeks to bring the results of modern research in economic history to a wide audience. The focus is not only on explaining how the Great Depression happened but also on understanding what eventually led to the recovery from the crisis. A key feature is that every chapter has a full list of bibliographical references which can be a platform for further study.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199663187
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/05/2013
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Crafts is Professor of Economic History at the University of Warwick and Director of the ESRC Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy Research Centre (CAGE). He has held positions at the London School of Economics, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a consultant to many organizations including HM Treasury, IMF, and the World Bank.


Peter Fearon is Emeritus Professor of Modern Economic History at the University of Leicester. He has published widely on the great depression with a particular emphasis on the US economy and the New Deal. He has held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge, the University of Kansas, and La Trobe University.

Table of Contents

1. Depression and Recovery in the 1930s: An Overview, Nicholas Crafts2. The 1930s: Understanding the Lessons, Nicholas Crafts and Peter Fearon3. Europe's Great Depression: coordination failure after the First World War, Nikolaus Wolf4. Reparations, Deficits, and Debt Default: The Great Depression in Germany, Albrecht Ritschl5. Disintegration of the International Economy between the Wars, Forrest Capie6. The Political Lessons of Depression-era Banking Reform, Charles Calomiris7. The Banking Panics in the United States in the 1930s: Some Lessons for Today, Michael Bordo and John Landon-Lane8. Can Contractionary Fiscal Policy be Expansionary? Consolidation, Sustainability, and Fiscal Policy Impact in Britain in the 1930s, Roger Middleton9. US Monetary and Fiscal Policy in the 1930s, Price Fishback10. What was New about the New Deal?, Price Fishback and John Wallis11. Labour Markets in the Interwar Period and Economic Recovery in the UK and the USA, Timothy J. Hatton and Mark Thomas12. Economic Growth and Recovery in the United States: 1919-1941, Alexander J. Field13. Blood and Treasure: Exiting the Great Depression and Lessons for Today, Kris James Mitchener and Joseph Mason14. Fetters of Gold and Paper, Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin

Editorial Reviews

"This is not an ordinary edited volume. Every paper seems to have been specially written for it and fits the title. Each views an aspect of the interwar era in light of theoretical and policy issues related to our own post-2008 depression, and draws explicit lessons... the volume includes many of the best economic historians working on the interwar era, scholars worth reading... all of the papers are admirably up to date on the current macroeconomics literature, including recent attempts to accounts for events of the 1930s in terms of real business cycle and New Keynesian models. Monetary policy at the zero bound, hysteresis in the natural rate of unemployment, recovery from a financial crisis and regulatory reforms, the euro and the gold standard — these and many other topics are well-covered." —EH.Net

From the Publisher