The
Great Depression was a severe worldwide
economic depression in the
decade preceding
World War II. The
timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most
countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s
or early 1940s. It was the longest, most widespread, and deepest
depression of the 20th century, and is used in the 21st century as
an example of how far the world's economy can decline.
The depression
originated in the United
States
, starting with the stock market crash of October 29,
1929 (known as Black Tuesday), but
quickly spread to almost every country in the world.
The Great Depression had devastating effects in virtually every
country, rich and poor.
Personal
income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, and
international trade plunged by a half to two-thirds.
Unemployment in the
United
States
rose to 25%, and in some countries rose as high as
33%. Cities all
around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on
heavy industry. Construction was
virtually halted in many countries.
Farming
and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by approximately 60
percent. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of
jobs, areas dependent on
primary sector
industries such as
cash cropping,
mining and
logging
suffered the most.
Countries started to recover by the mid-1930s, but in many
countries the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until
the start of World War II.

USA annual real GDP from 1910–60, with
the years of the Great Depression (1929–1939) highlighted.

Unemployment rate in the US 1910–1960,
with the years of the Great Depression (1929–1939)
highlighted.
Start of the Great Depression

US industrial production
(1928–39).
.JPG/180px-US_Farm_Prices_(1928-1935).JPG)
US Farm Prices, (1928–35).
Historians most often attribute the start of the Great Depression
to the sudden and total collapse of US stock market prices on
October 29, 1929, known as
Black
Tuesday. However, some dispute this conclusion, and see the
stock crash as a symptom, rather than a cause of the Great
Depression. Even after the
Wall Street Crash of 1929,
optimism persisted for some time;
John D. Rockefeller said that "These are days
when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions
have come and gone. Prosperity has always returned and will again."
The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early
1929 levels by April, though still almost 30% below the peak of
September 1929. Together, government and business actually spent
more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of
the previous year. But consumers, many of whom had suffered severe
losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their
expenditures by ten percent, and a severe drought ravaged the
agricultural heartland of the USA beginning in the summer of
1930.
By mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected
deflation and the reluctance of people to
add new debt by borrowing, meant that consumer spending and
investment were depressed. In May 1930, automobile sales had
declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to
decline, but wages held steady in 1930; but then a
deflationary spiral started in 1931.
Conditions were worse in farming areas, where commodity prices
plunged, and in mining and logging areas, where unemployment was
high and there were few other jobs. The decline in the
US economy was the factor that
pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses
or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better.
Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations
through
protectionist policies, such
as the 1930 U.S.
Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act and
retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in
global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which
reached bottom by March 1933.
Causes
There were multiple causes for the first downturn in 1929,
including the structural weaknesses and specific events that turned
it into a major depression and the way in which the downturn spread
from country to country. In relation to the 1929 downturn,
historians emphasize structural factors like massive bank failures
and the stock market crash, while economists (such as
Peter Temin and
Barry Eichengreen) point to Britain's
decision to return to the
Gold
Standard at pre-
World War I parities
(US$4.86:£1).
Recession cycles are thought to be a normal part of living in a
world of inexact balances between
supply and demand. What turns a usually
mild and short recession or "ordinary"
business cycle into an actual depression is a
subject of debate and concern. Scholars have not agreed on the
exact causes and their relative importance. The search for causes
is closely connected to the question of how to avoid a future
depression, and so the political and policy viewpoints of scholars
are mixed into the analysis of historic events eight decades ago.
The even larger question is whether it was largely a failure on the
part of
free markets or largely a
failure on the part of government efforts to regulate
interest rates, curtail widespread bank
failures, and control the money supply. Those who believe in a
large role for the state in the economy believe it was mostly a
failure of the free markets and those who believe in free markets
believe it was mostly a failure of government that compounded the
problem.
Current theories may be broadly classified into three main points
of view. First there are the
monetarists,
who believe that the Great Depression started as an ordinary
recession, but that significant policy mistakes by monetary
authorities (especially the
Federal
Reserve), caused a shrinking of the money supply which greatly
exacerbated the economic situation, causing a recession to descend
into the Great Depression. Related to this explanation are those
who point to
debt deflation causing
those who borrow to owe ever more in real terms.
Second, there are structural theories, most importantly
Keynesian, but also including those who
point to the breakdown of international trade, and
Institutional economists who point
to
underconsumption and
overinvestment (
economic bubble),
malfeasance by bankers and
industrialists, or incompetence by government officials. The
consensus viewpoint is that there was a large-scale loss of
confidence that led to a sudden reduction in consumption and
investment spending. Once panic and deflation set in, many people
believed they could make more money by keeping clear of the markets
as prices dropped lower and a given amount of money bought ever
more goods, exacerbating the drop in demand.
Lastly, there are various
heterodox
theories that downplay or reject the explanations of the
Keynesian and monetarists. For example, some
new classical macroeconomists
have argued that various labor market policies imposed at the start
caused the length and severity of the Great Depression. The
Austrian school of
economics focuses on the
macroeconomic effects of
money supply, and how
central banking decisions can lead to
overinvestment (
economic bubble).
The
Marxist critique of political economy
emphasizes the tendency of
capitalism to
create unbalanced accumulations of wealth, leading to
overaccumulations of capital and a repeating cycle of devaluations
through economic crises. Marx saw recession and depression as
unavoidable under free-market capitalism as there are no
restrictions on accumulations of capital other than the market
itself.
Monetarist explanations
Monetarists, including
Milton Friedman and current
Federal Reserve System chairman
Ben Bernanke, argue that the Great
Depression was mainly caused by
monetary contraction, the
consequence of poor policymaking by the American
Federal Reserve System and continued
crisis in the banking system. In this view, the Federal Reserve, by
not acting, allowed the money supply as measured by the
M2 to shrink by one-third from 1929 to 1933,
thereby transforming a normal recession into the Great Depression.
Friedman argued that the downward turn in the economy, starting
with the stock market crash, would have been just another
recession. However, the Federal Reserve allowed some large public
bank failures – particularly that of the
New York Bank of the United
States – which produced panic and widespread runs on local
banks, and the Federal Reserve sat idly by while banks collapsed.
He claimed that, if the Fed had provided emergency lending to these
key banks, or simply bought
government
bonds on the
open market to provide
liquidity and increase the quantity of money after the key banks
fell, all the rest of the banks would not have fallen after the
large ones did, and the money supply would not have fallen as far
and as fast as it did. With significantly less money to go around,
businessmen could not get new loans and could not even get their
old loans renewed, forcing many to stop investing. This
interpretation blames the Federal Reserve for inaction, especially
the New York branch.
One reason why the Federal Reserve did not act to limit the decline
of the money supply was regulation. At that time the amount of
credit the Federal Reserve could issue was limited by laws which
required partial gold backing of that credit. By the late 1920s the
Federal Reserve had almost hit the limit of allowable credit that
could be backed by the gold in its possession. This credit was in
the form of Federal Reserve demand notes. Since a "promise of gold"
is not as good as "gold in the hand", during the bank panics a
portion of those demand notes were redeemed for Federal Reserve
gold. Since the Federal Reserve had hit its limit on allowable
credit, any reduction in gold in its vaults had to be accompanied
by a greater reduction in credit. On April 5, 1933 President
Roosevelt signed
Executive Order
6102 making the private ownership of
gold certificates, coins and bullion
illegal, reducing the pressure on Federal Reserve gold.
Debt deflation
Irving Fisher argued that the
predominant factor leading to the Great Depression was
over-indebtedness and deflation. Fisher tied loose credit to
over-indebtedness, which fueled speculation and asset bubbles. He
then outlined 9 factors interacting with one another under
conditions of debt and deflation to create the mechanics of boom to
bust. The chain of events proceeded as follows:
- Debt liquidation and distress selling
- Contraction of the money supply as bank loans are paid off
- A fall in the level of asset prices
- A still greater fall in the net worths of business,
precipitating bankruptcies
- A fall in profits
- A reduction in output, in trade and in employment.
- Pessimism and loss of confidence
- Hoarding of money
- A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation
adjusted interest rates.
During the Crash of 1929 preceding the Great Depression, margin
requirements were only 10%. Brokerage firms, in other words, would
lend $9 for every $1 an investor had deposited. When the market
fell, brokers called in these loans, which could not be paid back.
Banks began to fail as debtors defaulted on debt and depositors
attempted to withdraw their deposits en masse, triggering multiple
bank runs. Government guarantees and
Federal Reserve banking regulations to prevent such panics were
ineffective or not used. Bank failures led to the loss of billions
of dollars in assets. Outstanding debts became heavier, because
prices and incomes fell by 20–50% but the debts remained at the
same dollar amount. After the panic of 1929, and during the first
10 months of 1930, 744 US banks failed. (In all, 9,000 banks failed
during the 1930s). By April 1933, around $7 billion in deposits had
been frozen in failed banks or those left unlicensed after the
March Bank Holiday.
Bank failures snowballed as desperate bankers called in loans which
the borrowers did not have time or money to repay. With future
profits looking poor,
capital investment
and construction slowed or completely ceased. In the face of bad
loans and worsening future prospects, the surviving banks became
even more conservative in their lending. Banks built up their
capital reserves and made fewer loans, which intensified
deflationary pressures. A
vicious cycle developed
and the downward spiral accelerated.
The liquidation of debt could not keep up with the fall of prices
which it caused. The mass effect of the stampede to liquidate
increased the value of each dollar owed, relative to the value of
declining asset holdings. The very effort of individuals to lessen
their burden of debt effectively increased it. Paradoxically, the
more the debtors paid, the more they owed. This self-aggravating
process turned a 1930 recession into a 1933 great depression.
Macroeconomists including
Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the
U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, have revived
the debt-deflation view of the Great Depression originated by
Fisher.
Structural explanations
Keynesian
British economist
John Maynard
Keynes argued in
General Theory
of Employment Interest and Money that lower aggregate
expenditures in the economy contributed to a massive decline in
income and to employment that was well below the average. In such a
situation, the economy reached equilibrium at low levels of
economic activity and high unemployment. Keynes basic idea was
simple: to keep people fully employed, governments have to run
deficits when the economy is slowing, as the private sector would
not invest enough to keep production at the normal level and bring
the economy out of recession. Keynesian economists called on
governments during times of
economic
crisis to pick up the slack by increasing
government spending and/or cutting
taxes.
As the Depression wore on, Roosevelt tried public works,
farm subsidies, and other devices to
restart the economy, but never completely gave up trying to balance
the budget. According to the Keynesians, this improved the economy,
but Roosevelt never spent enough to bring the economy out of
recession until the start of World War II.
Breakdown of international trade
Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international
trade after 1930 helped to worsen the depression, especially for
countries significantly dependent on foreign trade. Most historians
and economists partly blame the American
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (enacted
June 17, 1930) for worsening the depression by seriously reducing
international trade and causing retaliatory tariffs in other
countries. While foreign trade was a small part of overall economic
activity in the United States and was concentrated in a few
businesses like farming, it was a much larger factor in many other
countries. The average
ad
valorem rate of duties on dutiable imports for 1921–1925
was 25.9% but under the new tariff it jumped to 50% in
1931–1935.
In dollar terms, American exports declined from about $5.2 billion
in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1933; but prices also fell, so the
physical volume of exports only fell by half. Hardest hit were farm
commodities such as wheat, cotton, tobacco, and lumber. According
to this theory, the collapse of farm exports caused many American
farmers to default on their loans, leading to the
bank runs on small rural banks that characterized
the early years of the Great Depression.
New classical approach
Recent work from a neoclassical perspective focuses on the decline
in productivity that caused the initial decline in output and a
prolonged recovery due to policies that affected the labor market.
This work, collected by Kehoe and Prescott, decomposes the economic
decline into a decline in the
labor
force, capital stock, and the productivity with which these
inputs are used. This study suggests that theories of the Great
Depression have to explain an initial severe decline but rapid
recovery in productivity, relatively little change in the capital
stock, and a prolonged depression in the labor force. This analysis
rejects theories that focus on the role of savings and posit a
decline in the capital stock.
Austrian School
Another explanation comes from the
Austrian School of economics. Theorists of
the "Austrian School" who wrote about the Depression include
Austrian economist
Friedrich Hayek
and American economist
Murray
Rothbard, who wrote
America's Great Depression
(1963). In their view and like the monetarists, the Federal
Reserve, which was created in 1913, shoulders much of the blame;
but in opposition to the monetarists, they argue that the key cause
of the Depression was the expansion of the money supply in the
1920s that led to an unsustainable credit-driven boom.
One reason for the monetary inflation was to help Great Britain,
which, in the 1920s, was struggling with its plans to return to the
gold standard at pre-war (World War I) parity. Returning to the
gold standard at this rate meant that the British economy was
facing deflationary pressure. According to Rothbard, the lack of
price flexibility in Britain meant that unemployment shot up, and
the American government was asked to help. The United States was
receiving a net inflow of gold, and inflated further in order to
help Britain return to the gold standard.
Montagu Norman, head of the Bank of England,
had an especially good relationship with
Benjamin Strong, the
de facto
head of the Federal Reserve. Norman pressured the heads of the
central banks of France and Germany to inflate as well, but unlike
Strong, they refused. Rothbard says American inflation was meant to
allow Britain to inflate as well, because under the gold standard,
Britain could not inflate on its own.
In the Austrian view it was this inflation of the money supply that
led to an unsustainable boom in both asset prices (stocks and
bonds) and
capital goods. By the time
the Fed belatedly tightened in 1928, it was far too late and, in
the Austrian view, a depression was inevitable.
According to the Austrians, the artificial interference in the
economy was a disaster prior to the Depression, and government
efforts to prop up the economy after the crash of 1929 only made
things worse. According to Rothbard, government intervention
delayed the market's adjustment and made the road to complete
recovery more difficult.
Furthermore, Rothbard criticizes Milton Friedman's assertion that
the central bank failed to inflate the supply of money. Rothbard
asserts that the Federal Reserve bought $1.1 billion of government
securities from February to July 1932, raising its total holding to
$1.8 billion. Total
bank reserves rose
by only $212 million, but Rothbard argues that this was because the
American populace lost faith in the banking system and began
hoarding more cash, a factor quite beyond the control of the
Central Bank. The potential for a run on the banks caused local
bankers to be more conservative in lending out their reserves, and
this, Rothbard argues, was the cause of the Federal Reserve's
inability to inflate.
Inequality of wealth and income
Two economists of the 1920s,
Waddill
Catchings and
William Trufant
Foster, popularized a theory that influenced many policy
makers, including Herbert Hoover,
Henry
A. Wallace,
Paul Douglas, and
Marriner Eccles. It held the economy
produced more than it consumed, because the consumers did not have
enough income. Thus the unequal
distribution of wealth throughout the
1920s caused the Great Depression.
According to this view, wages increased at a rate lower than
productivity increases. Most of the benefit of the increased
productivity went into profits, which went into the
stock market bubble rather than into
consumer purchases.
Say's law no longer
operated in this model (an idea picked up by Keynes).
As long as corporations had continued to expand their capital
facilities (their factories, warehouses, heavy equipment, and other
investments), the economy had flourished. Under pressure from the
Coolidge administration and from
business, the Federal Reserve Board kept the
discount rate low, encouraging high (and
excessive) investment. By the end of the 1920s, however, capital
investments had created more plant space than could be profitably
used, and factories were producing more than consumers could
purchase.
According to this view, the
root cause of
the Great Depression was a global overinvestment in heavy industry
capacity compared to wages and earnings from independent
businesses, such as farms. The solution was the government must
pump money into consumers' pockets. That is, it must redistribute
purchasing power, maintain the industrial base, but reinflate
prices and wages to force as much of the inflationary increase in
purchasing power into
consumer
spending. The economy was overbuilt, and new factories were not
needed. Foster and Catchings recommended federal and state
governments start large construction projects, a program followed
by Hoover and Roosevelt.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932 and
inaugurated March 4, 1933, blamed the excesses of big business for
causing an unstable bubble-like economy. Democrats believed the
problem was that business had too much money, and the
New Deal was intended as a remedy, by empowering
labor unions and farmers and by raising
taxes on corporate profits. In addition, excess price and entry
competition, integrated banking, and the sheer size of corporations
were viewed as contributing factors. Regulation of the economy was
a favorite remedy to this problem.
Turning point and recovery

The overall course of the Depression
in the United States, as reflected in per-capita GDP (average
income per person) shown in constant year 2000 dollars, plus some
of the key events of the period.
Various countries around the world started to recover from the
Great Depression at different times. In most countries of the world
recovery from the Great Depression began in 1933. In the United
States recovery began in the spring of 1933. However, the U.S. did
not return to 1929 GNP for over a decade and still had an
unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940, albeit down from the high
of 25% in 1933.
There is no consensus among economists regarding the motive force
for the U.S. economic expansion that continued through most of the
Roosevelt years (and the sharp contraction of the 1937 recession
that interrupted it). According to
Christina Romer, the money supply growth
caused by huge international gold inflows was a crucial source of
the recovery of the United States economy, and that the economy
showed little sign of self-correction. The gold inflows were partly
due to
devaluation of the U.S.
dollar and partly due to deterioration of the political
situation in Europe. In their book,
A Monetary History of
the United States,
Milton
Friedman and
Anna J. Schwartz also attributed the recovery to
monetary factors, and contended that it was much slowed by poor
management of money by the
Federal Reserve System. Current
Chairman of the Federal
Reserve Ben Bernanke agrees that
monetary factors played important roles both in the worldwide
economic decline and eventual recovery. Bernanke, also sees a
strong role for institutional factors, particularly the rebuilding
and restructuring of the financial system, and points out that the
Depression needs to be examined in international perspective.
Economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, believe that the
economy should have returned to normal after four years of
depression except for continued depressing influences, and point
the finger to the lack of downward flexibility in prices and wages,
encouraged by Roosevelt Administration policies such as the
National Industrial
Recovery Act. Some economists hava called attention to the
expectations of
reflation and rising
nominal interest rates that Roosevelt's words and actions
portended.
Gold standard
Economic studies have indicated that just as the downturn was
spread worldwide by the rigidities of the
Gold Standard, it was suspending gold
convertibility (or devaluing the currency in gold terms) that did
most to make recovery possible. What policies countries followed
after casting off the gold standard, and what results followed
varied widely.
Every major currency left the
gold
standard during the Great Depression. Great Britain was the
first to do so.
Facing speculative attacks on the pound and depleting gold reserves, in September 1931 the
Bank of
England
ceased exchanging pound notes for gold and the
pound was floated on foreign exchange markets.

The Depression in international
perspective.
Great Britain, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries left the gold
standard in 1931. Other countries, such as Italy and the United
States, remained on the gold standard into 1932 or 1933, while a
few countries in the so-called "gold bloc", led by France and
including Poland, Belgium and Switzerland, stayed on the standard
until 1935–1936.
According to later analysis, the earliness with which a country
left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery.
For example, Great Britain and Scandinavia, which left the gold
standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium,
which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which
had a
silver standard, almost
avoided the depression entirely. The connection between leaving the
gold standard as a strong predictor of that country's severity of
its depression and the length of time of its recovery has been
shown to be consistent for dozens of countries, including
developing countries. This partly
explains why the experience and length of the depression differed
between national economies.
World War II and recovery
The Great Depression ended as nations increased their production of
war materials at the start of World War II.
A factory worker in 1942.
The common view among economic historians is that the Great
Depression ended with the advent of World War II. Many economists
believe that government spending on the war caused or at least
accelerated recovery from the Great Depression. However, some
consider that it did not play a great role in the recovery,
although it did help in reducing unemployment.
The massive rearmament policies leading up to World War II helped
stimulate the economies of Europe in 1937–39. By 1937, unemployment
in Britain had fallen to 1.5 million. The mobilization of manpower
following the outbreak of war in 1939 finally ended
unemployment.
America's late entry into the war in 1941 finally eliminated the
last effects from the Great Depression and brought the unemployment
rate down below 10%. In the United States, massive war spending
doubled economic growth rates, either masking the effects of the
Depression or essentially ending the Depression. Businessmen
ignored the mounting
national debt and
heavy new taxes, redoubling their efforts for greater output to
take advantage of
generous government
contracts.
Productivity soared: most people worked
overtime and gave up leisure activities to make
money after so many hard years. People accepted
rationing and
price
controls for the first time as a way of expressing their
support for the
war effort.
Cost-plus pricing in munitions contracts
guaranteed businesses a profit no matter how many mediocre workers
they employed or how inefficient the techniques they used. The
demand was for a vast quantity of war supplies as soon as possible,
regardless of cost. Businesses hired every person in sight, even
driving sound trucks up and down city streets begging people to
apply for jobs. New workers were needed to replace the 11 million
working-age men serving in the military.
Effects
The majority of countries set up relief programs, and most
underwent some sort of political upheaval, pushing them to the left
or right. In some states, the desperate citizens turned toward
nationalist
demagogues—the most infamous
being
Adolf Hitler—setting the stage
for World War II in 1939.
Australia
Australia's extreme dependence on agricultural and industrial
exports meant it was one of the hardest-hit
countries in the
Western world,
amongst the likes of Canada and Germany. Falling export demand and
commodity prices placed massive downward pressures on wages.
Further,
unemployment reached a record
high of 29% in 1932, with incidents of
civil unrest becoming common. After 1932, an
increase in wool and meat prices led to a gradual recovery.
Canada
Harshly impacted by both the global economic downturn and the
Dust Bowl, Canadian industrial production
had fallen to only 58% of the 1929 level by 1932, the second lowest
level in the world after the United States, and well behind nations
such as Britain, which saw it fall only to 83% of the 1929 level.
Total
national
income fell to 56% of the 1929 level, again worse than any
nation apart from the United States. Unemployment reached 27% at
the depth of the Depression in 1933. During the 1930s, Canada
employed a highly restrictive
immigration policy.
Chile
Chile
initially
felt the impact of the Great Depression in 1930, when GDP dropped
14 percent, mining income declined 27 percent, and export earnings
fell 28 percent. By 1932 GDP had shrunk to less than half of
what it had been in 1929, exacting a terrible toll in unemployment
and business failures. The
League of
Nations labeled Chile the country hardest hit by the Great
Depression because 80 percent of government revenue came from
exports of copper and nitrates, which were in low demand.
Influenced profoundly by the Great Depression, many national
leaders promoted the development of local industry in an effort to
insulate the economy from future external shocks. After six years
of government
austerity measures, which
succeeded in reestablishing Chile's creditworthiness, Chileans
elected to office during the 1938–58 period a succession of center
and left-of-center governments interested in promoting economic
growth by means of government intervention.
Prompted in part by the devastating earthquake of 1939, the
Popular Front government of
Pedro Aguirre Cerda created the
Production Development Corporation (Corporación de Fomento de la
Producción,
CORFO) to encourage with subsidies
and direct investments an ambitious program of
import substitution industrialization.
Consequently, as in other Latin American countries,
protectionism became an entrenched aspect of
the Chilean economy.
France
The Depression began to affect France around 1931. France's
relatively high degree of self-sufficiency meant the damage was
considerably less than in nations like Germany. However, hardship
and unemployment were high enough to lead to
rioting and the rise of the
socialist Popular Front.
Germany
Germany's
Weimar
Republic
was hit hard
by the depression, as American loans to help rebuild the German
economy now stopped. Unemployment soared, especially in
larger cities, and the
political
system veered toward
extremism. The
unemployment rate reached nearly 30% in 1932. Repayment of the war
reparations due by Germany were suspended in 1932 following the
Lausanne Conference of
1932. By that time Germany had repaid 1/8th of the reparations.
Hitler's
Nazi Party came to
power in January 1933.
Japan
The Great
Depression did not strongly affect Japan
. The
Japanese economy shrank by 8% during 1929–31. However, Japan's
Finance Minister
Takahashi
Korekiyo was the first to implement what have come to be
identified as
Keynesian economic
policies: first, by large fiscal stimulus involving
deficit spending; and second, by devaluing
the currency. Takahashi used the Bank of Japan
to sterilize the deficit spending and minimize resulting
inflationary pressures. Econometric studies have identified the
fiscal stimulus as especially effective.
The devaluation of the currency had an immediate effect. Japanese
textiles began to displace British textiles in export markets. The
deficit spending, however proved to be most profound. The deficit
spending went into the purchase of munitions for the armed forces.
By 1933, Japan was already out of the depression. By 1934 Takahashi
realized that the economy was in danger of overheating, and to
avoid inflation, moved to reduce the deficit spending that went
towards armaments and munitions. This resulted in a strong and
swift negative reaction from nationalists, especially those in the
Army, culminating in his assassination in the course of the
February 26 Incident. This had
a
chilling effect on all
civilian bureaucrats in the Japanese government. From 1934, the
military's dominance of the government continued to grow. Instead
of reducing deficit spending, the government introduced price
controls and rationing schemes that reduced, but did not eliminate
inflation, which would remain a problem until the end of World War
II.
The deficit spending had a transformative effect on Japan. Japan's
industrial production doubled during the 1930s. Further, in 1929
the list of the largest firms in Japan was dominated by light
industries, especially textile companies (many of Japan's
automakers, like
Toyota, have their roots in
the textile industry). By 1940
light
industry had been displaced by heavy industry as the largest
firms inside the Japanese economy.
Latin America
Because of high levels of United States investment in
Latin American economies, they were severely
damaged by the Depression.
Within the region, Chile
, Bolivia
and Peru
were
particularly badly affected.
Netherlands
From
roughly 1931 until 1937, the Netherlands
suffered a deep and exceptionally long
depression. This depression was partly caused by the
after-effects of the
Stock
Market Crash of 1929 in the United States, and partly by
internal factors in the Netherlands. Government policy, especially
the very late dropping of the
Gold
Standard, played a role in prolonging the depression. The Great
Depression in the Netherlands led to some political instability and
riots, and can be linked to the rise of the Dutch
national-socialist party
NSB. The depression in the
Netherlands eased off somewhat at the end of 1936, when the
government finally dropped the
Gold
Standard, but real economic stability did not return until
after World War II.
South Africa
As world trade slumped, demand for
South
African agricultural and mineral exports fell drastically. The
Carnegie Commission on Poor Whites had concluded in 1931 that
nearly one-third of
Afrikaners lived as
paupers. It is believed that the social discomfort caused by the
depression was a contributing factor in the 1933 split between the
"gesuiwerde" (purified) and "smelter" (fusionist) factions within
the
National Party and
the National Party's subsequent fusion with the
South African Party.
Soviet Union
Having removed itself from the capitalist
world system both by choice and as a result of
efforts of the capitalist powers to isolate it, the Great
Depression had little effect on the Soviet Union. A Soviet trade
agency in New York advertised 6,000 positions and received more
than 100,000 applications. Its apparent immunity to the Great
Depression seemed to validate the theory of Marxism and contributed
to
Socialist and
Communist agitation in affected nations. Many
Western intellectuals, like
New York
Times reporter
Walter Duranty,
looked upon Soviet Union with sympathies, ignoring criticisms about
Soviet famine that killed millions of
people. President Roosevelt also looked upon Soviet Union with
sympathies, favoring closer diplomatic and economic ties between
two countries.
United Kingdom
The
effects on the industrial areas of Britain
were
immediate and devastating, as demand for British products
collapsed. By the end of 1930 unemployment had more than
doubled from 1 million to 2.5 million (20% of the insured
workforce), and exports had fallen in value by 50%.
In 1933, 30% of
Glaswegians
were unemployed due to the severe decline in heavy
industry. In some towns and cities in the north east,
unemployment reached as high as 70% as ship production fell 90%.
The
National Hunger
March of September–October 1932 was the largest of a series of
hunger marches in Britain in the
1920s and 1930s. About 200,000 unemployed men were sent to the work
camps, which continued in operation until 1939.
United States
Hoover administration
President
Herbert Hoover started
numerous programs, all of which failed to reverse the downturn. In
June 1930 Congress approved the
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which raised
tariffs on thousands of imported items. The intent of the Act was
to encourage the purchase of American-made products by increasing
the cost of imported goods, while raising revenue for the federal
government and protecting farmers. However, other nations increased
tariffs on American-made goods in retaliation, reducing
international trade, and worsening the Depression. In 1931 Hoover
urged the major banks in the country to form a consortium known as
the National Credit Corporation (NCC).By 1932 unemployment had
reached 23.6%, and it peaked in early 1933 at 25%, a drought
persisted in the agricultural heartland, businesses and families
defaulted on record numbers of loans, and more than 5,000 banks had
failed. Hundreds of thousands of Americans found themselves
homeless and they began congregating in the numerous
Hoovervilles that had begun to appear across the
country. In response, President Hoover and Congress approved the
Federal Home Loan Bank
Act, to spur new home construction, and reduce foreclosures.
The final attempt of the Hoover Administration to stimulate the
economy was the passage of the
Emergency Relief and
Construction Act (ERA) which included funds for public works
programs such as dams and the creation of the
Reconstruction Finance
Corporation (RFC) in 1932. The RFC's initial goal was to
provide government-secured loans to
financial institutions, railroads and
farmers. Quarter by quarter the economy went downhill, as prices,
profits and employment fell, leading to the
political realignment in 1932 that
brought to power
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.
Roosevelt administration

Great Depression: man lying down on
pier, New York City docks, 1935.
Shortly after President Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, drought
and erosion combined to cause the
Dust
Bowl, shifting hundreds of thousands of
displaced persons off their farms in the
Midwest. From his inauguration onward, Roosevelt argued that
restructuring of the economy would be needed to prevent another
depression or avoid prolonging the current one. New Deal programs
sought to stimulate
demand and provide work
and relief for the impoverished through increased government
spending and the institution of financial reforms. The
Securities Act of 1933
comprehensively regulated the securities industry. This was
followed by the
Securities Exchange Act of
1934 which created the
Securities and Exchange
Commission. Though amended, key provisions of both Acts are
still in force. Federal insurance of
bank deposits was provided by the
FDIC, and the
Glass-Steagall Act. The institution of
the
National Recovery
Administration (NRA) remains a controversial act to this day.
The NRA
made a number of sweeping changes to the American economy until it
was deemed
unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court of the United States
in 1935.
Early changes by the Roosevelt administration included:
- Instituting regulations to fight deflationary "cut-throat
competition" through the NRA.
- Setting minimum prices and wages,
labor standards, and competitive conditions in all industries
through the NRA.
- Encouraging unions that would raise wages, to increase the
purchasing power of the working class.
- Cutting farm production to raise prices through the Agricultural Adjustment Act and
its successors.
- Forcing businesses to work with government to set price codes
through the NRA.
These reforms, together with several other relief and recovery
measures, are called the
First New
Deal. Economic stimulus was attempted through a new
alphabet soup of agencies set up in 1933
and 1934 and previously extant agencies such as the
Reconstruction Finance
Corporation. By 1935, the "
Second
New Deal" added
Social Security (which did
not start making large payouts until much later), a jobs program
for the unemployed (the
Works Progress Administration,
WPA) and, through the
National Labor Relations
Board, a strong stimulus to the growth of labor unions. In
1929, federal expenditures constituted only 3% of the
GDP. The national debt as a
proportion of GNP rose under Hoover from 20% to 40%. Roosevelt kept
it at 40% until the war began, when it soared to 128%.
By 1936, the main
economic
indicators had regained the levels of the late 1920s, except
for unemployment, which remained high at 11%, although this was
considerably lower than the 25% unemployment rate seen in
1933.
In the spring of 1937, American industrial production exceeded that
of 1929 and remained level until June 1937. In June 1937, the
Roosevelt administration cut spending and increased taxation in an
attempt to balance the federal budget.The American economy then
took a sharp downturn, lasting for 13 months through most of 1938.
Industrial production fell almost 30 per cent within a few months
and production of
durable goods fell
even faster. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in
1938, rising from 5 million to more than 12 million in early 1938.
Manufacturing output fell by 37% from the 1937 peak and was back to
1934 levels. Producers reduced their expenditures on durable goods,
and inventories declined, but personal income was only 15% lower
than it had been at the peak in 1937. As unemployment rose,
consumers' expenditures declined, leading to further cutbacks in
production. By May 1938 retail sales began to increase, employment
improved, and industrial production turned up after June 1938.
After the recovery from the Recession of 1937–1938, conservatives
were able to form a bipartisan
conservative coalition to stop
further expansion of the New Deal and, when unemployment dropped to
2%, they abolished WPA, CCC and the PWA relief programs. Social
Security, however, remained in place.
There has always been debate among politicians and scholars as to
whether New Deal policies lengthened and deepened the Depression.
One small voluntary response survey from 85 PhD holding members of
the Economic History Society, which the author stated may not be
representative of all economic historians, showed that there were
statistically different opinions between economic historians who
taught or studied economic history and those that taught or studied
economic theory. The former were in consensus that the New Deal did
not lengthen and deepen the depression, while the latter were more
evenly divided.
Political consequences
The crisis had many political consequences, among which was the
abandonment of classic
economic
liberal approaches, which Roosevelt replaced in the United
States with
Keynesian policies. These
policies magnified the role of the federal government in the
national economy. Between 1933 and 1939, federal expenditure
tripled, and Roosevelt's critics charged that he was turning
America into a
socialist state. The Great
Depression was a main factor in the implementation of
social democracy and
planned economies in European countries
after World War II. (see
Marshall
Plan). Although
Austrian
economists had challenged Keynesianism since the 1920s, it was
not until the 1970s, with the influence of
Milton Friedman that the Keynesian approach
was politically questioned.
Social movements
The rise of the
Technocracy
movement occurred around the transition time of the Hoover
administration into that of
Franklin
Roosevelts administration. The
Technocrats advocated a
Non-market economics system based on
Energy accounting, which was also
a non political approach (
biophysical economics) to governance.
Technocracy held that all politics and all economic arrangements
based on the
Price system (i.e., based
on traditional economic theory) were antiquated. Also that building
a successful modern government could be based on engineering
principles. "Production for use," a term they used, was meant as a
contrast to production for profit in the capitalist system.
Production for use became a slogan for many of the radical-left
movements of the era also.
Upton
Sinclair, among others, affirmed his belief in "production for
use" and the Technocrats briefly made common cause with Sinclair,
and even
Huey Long, in California. But the
Technocrats were not of the political left, as they held every
political and economic system, from the left to the right, to be
unsound. As a
mass movement its real
center was California where it claimed half a million members in
1934. Technocracy counted among its admirers such men as the
novelist
H.G. Wells, the author
Theodore Dreiser and the economist
Thorstein Veblen. Among the collection of
movements of the 1930s, the Technocracy movement survives into the
present day.
Literature
The U.S. Depression has been the subject of much writing, as the
country has sought to re-evaluate an era that caused emotional as
well as financial trauma to its people. Perhaps the most noteworthy
and famous novel written on the subject is
The Grapes of Wrath, published in
1939 and written by
John Steinbeck,
who was awarded both the
Nobel Prize for
literature and the
Pulitzer Prize for
the work. The novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers who
are forced from their home as drought, economic hardship, and
changes in the
agricultural industry
occur during the Great Depression. Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men is another important
novel about a journey during the Great Depression.
The Great
Depression is a novella written by Alon Bersharder about a
sad, disgruntled
temporary worker,
making the title both a homage to the historical event and a pun.
Additionally, Harper Lee's
To
Kill a Mockingbird is set during the Great Depression.
Margaret Atwood's Booker prize-winning
The Blind Assassin is likewise set
in the Great Depression, centering on a privileged socialite's love
affair with a Marxist revolutionary. The era spurred the resurgence
of social realism, practiced by many who started their writing
careers on relief programs such as the
Federal Writers' Project; that
experience and its effects is described in the history
Soul of
a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression
America, by David Taylor (2009).
Other "great depressions"
There have been other downturns called a "Great Depression," but
none has been as worldwide for so long. British economic historians
used the term "Great depression" to describe British conditions in
the late 19th century, especially in agriculture, 1873–1896, a
period also referred to as the
Long
Depression. Several Latin American countries had severe
downturns in the 1980s. Finnish economists refer to the
Finnish economic decline around the
breakup of the Soviet Union (1989–1994) as a great depression.
Kehoe and Prescott define a great depression to be a period of
diminished
economic output with
at least one year where output is 20% below the trend. By this
definition
Argentina,
Brazil,
Chile, and
Mexico
experienced great depressions in the 1980s, and Argentina
experienced
another in 1998–2002.
This definition also includes the economic performance of
New Zealand from 1974–1992 and
Switzerland from 1973 to the
present, although this designation for Switzerland has been
controversial.
The
economic crisis in the 1990s that struck former members of the
Soviet
Union
was almost twice as intense as the Great Depression
in the countries of Western Europe
and the United States in the 1930s. Average
standards of living registered a
catastrophic fall in the early 1990s in many parts of the former
Eastern Bloc - most notably, in
post-Soviet states.
Even before Russia's
financial crisis of
1998, Russia
's GDP was
half of what it had been in the early 1990s. Some
populations are still poorer today than they were in 1989 (e.g.
Ukraine
, Moldova
, Serbia
, Central Asia, Caucasus). The collapse of the Soviet
planned economy and the
transition to market economy
resulted in catastrophic declines in GDP of about 45% during the
1990–1996 period and poverty in the region had increased more than
tenfold.
People have been taking to calling
the current economic recession the
"
Great Recession".
See also
References
- Great Depression, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Charles Duhigg, "Depression, You Say? Check Those Safety Nets,"
New York Times, March 23, 2008
- Mitchell, Depression Decade
- Great Depression and World War II. The
Library of Congress.
- Economics focus: The Great Depression The
Economist
- .
- .
- James Hamilton, Monetary Factors in the Great Depression,
Journal of Monetary Economics [1]
- Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal
(1973) ch 19; text
- "Friedman and Schwartz, Monetary History of the United States",
352
- Lawrence
R. Klein, The Keynesian Revolution(1947) 56–58, 169,
177–79; Theodore Rosenof, Economics in the Long Run: New Deal
Theorists and Their Legacies, 1933–1993 (1997)
- Dorfman 1959
- The Road to Plenty (1928)
- Per-capita GDP data from MeasuringWorth: What Was the U.S. GDP Then?
- Romer, Christina D., "What Ended the Great Depression",
Journal of Economic History, December 1992, vol 52, num 4,
pages 757–784 [2] "monetary development were crucial to the
recovery implies that self-correction played little role in the
growth of real output"
- Ben Bernanke. Essays on the Great Depression.
Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01698-6. p. 7
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in the Propaga-tion of the Great Depression,” The American
Economic Review 73, No. 3 (Jun 1983): 257–76, available from
the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank collection at
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/meltzer/record.php?collection_references_id=4271.
- Ben S. Bernanke, “The Macroeconomics of the Great
Depression: A Comparative Approach,” Journal of Money, Credit,
and Banking 27, No. 1 (February 1995): 1–28.
- Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, “New Deal Policies and the
Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium
Analysis,” Journal of Political Economy 112, No. 4 (Aug
2004): 779–816; and idem, “How Government Prolonged the
Depression: Policies that decreased competition in product and
labor markets were especially destructive,” Wall Street
Journal, Feb 2, 2009, p. A17, available from
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353276749137485.html.
- Gauti B. Eggertsson, “Great Expectations and the End of the
Depression,” American Economic Review 98, No. 4 (Sep
2008): 1476–1516;
- “Was the New Deal Contractionary?” Federal Reserve Bank of New
York Staff Report 264, Oct 2006,
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr264.html;
Eggertsson and Benjamin Pugsley, “The Mistake of 1937: A General
Equilibrium Analysis,” Monetary and Economic Studies 24,
No. S-1 (Dec 2006),
http://www.imes.boj.or.jp/english/publication/mes/2006/abst/me24-s1-8.html.
- Michael D. Bordo, “Gold Standard,” in The Concise
Encyclopedia of Economics.
- International data from Angus Maddison, "Historical Statistics
for the World Economy: 1–2003 AD," available from
http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/Historical_Statistics/. Gold dates
culled from historical sources, principally Barry [J] Eichengreen,
Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great
Depression, 1919–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995).
- Referring to the effect of World War II spending on the
economy, economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, "One
could not have had a better demonstration of the Keynesian
ideas."
- Romer, Christina D., "What Ended the Great Depression",
Journal of Economic History, December 1992, vol 52, num 4,
pages 757–784 [3] "fiscal policy was of little consequence even
as late as 1942, suggests an interesting twist on the usual view
that World War II caused, or at least accelerated, the recovery
from the Great Depression."
- Great Depression and World War II. The
Library of Congress.
- Depression & WWII. Americaslibrary.gov.
- Depression & WWII. Americaslibrary.gov.
- A Century of Change in the Australian Labour
Market, Australian Bureau of Statistics
- 1929–1939 – The Great Depression, Source: Bank
of Canada
- Why did Canada Refuse to Admit Jewish Refugees in
the 1930's?, Claude Bélanger, Department of History,
Marianopolis College
- About the Great Depression, University of
Illinois
- "Weimar Republic and the Great Depression"
- Germany - Economic, Public Broadcasting Service
(PBS).
- Is today's economic crisis another Great
Depression?, By John Waggoner, USA TODAY, 11/3/2008
- Myung Soo Cha, "Did Takahashi Korekiyo Rescue Japan from the
Great Depression?," The Journal of Economic History 63, No. 1 (Mar
2003): 127–44.
- (For more on the Japanese economy in the 1930s see "MITI and
the Japanese Miracle" by Chalmers Johnson)
- E. H. Kossmann, The Low Countries: 1780–1940
(1978)
- The Dust Bowl, Geoff Cunfer, Southwest
Minnesota State University
- The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the
Gulags: Hope and Betrayal in Stalin's Russia, The Sunday Times,
July 27, 2008
- The Great Depression and the 1930S, Federal
Research Division of the Library of Congress
- The Foresaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia,
by Timotheos Tzouliadis
- Orest Subtelny. Ukraine: a history. University of
Toronto Press. 2000. ISBN 9780802083906 p. 416
- Dennis J. Dunn. Caught between Roosevelt & Stalin:
America's ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky.
1998. ISBN 9780813120232 p. 21–23
- Unemployment During The Great Depression,
thegreatdepression.co.uk
- Cook, Chris and Bewes, Diccon; What Happened Where: A Guide
To Places And Events In Twentieth-Century History p. 115;
Routledge, 1997 ISBN 1-85728-533-6
- Work camps that tackled Depression, BBC News
- The Great Depression (1929–1939), The Eleanor
Roosevelt Papers
- Waren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
- "Smoot-Hawley Tariff", U.S. Department of
State.
- "Reconstruction Finance Corporation",
EH.net Encyclopedia.
- Joseph Swanson, and Samuel Williamson, "Estimates of national
product and income for the United States economy, 1919–1941,"
Explorations in Economic History 10 (1972) pp 53–73
- Great Depression. The Concise Encyclopedia of
Economics.
- "Great Depression in the United States",
Microsoft Encarta. Archived
2009-10-31.
- "The Great Depression and New Deal" by Joyce
Bryant, Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.
- National Park History: “The Spirit of the Civilian
Conservation Corps”
- The Great Depression, Robert Goldston, Fawcett
Publications, 1968, page 228
- Economic Fluctuations, Maurice W. Lee, Chairman of
Economics Dept., Washington State College, published by R. D. Irwin
Inc, Homewood, Illinois, 1955, page 236.
- Business Cycles, James Arthur Estey, Purdue Univ.,
Prentice-Hall, 1950, pages 22–23 chart.
- Maurice W. Lee, 1955
- Specifically, when asked whether "as a whole, government
policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great
Depression," 74% of respondents who taught or studied economic
history disagreed, 21% agreed with provisos, and 6% fully agreed.
Among respondents who taught or studied economic theory, 51%
disagreed, 22% agreed with provisos, and 22% fully agreed. Robert
Whaples, "Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic
Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions,"
Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1995),
pp. 139–154 in JSTOR see also the summary at
- Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Coming of the New Deal:
1933–1935. Paperback ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
(First published in 1958) ISBN 0-618-34086-6; Schlesinger, Jr.,
Arthur M. The Politics of Upheaval: 1935–1936. Paperback
ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. (First published in 1960)
ISBN 0-618-34087-4
- Lanny Ebenstein, Milton Friedman: A Biography
(2007)
- [4] Unruly complexity: ecology, interpretation,
engagement By Peter J. Taylor ISBN 9780226790350 Retrieved
Oct-14-09
- http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html Official Social
Security History site Technocracy section Retrieved
October-14-09
- T. W. Fletcher, "The Great Depression of English Agriculture
1873–1896," The Economic History Review, Vol. 13, No. 3
(1961), pp. 417–432 in JSTOR
- See “What Can Transition Economies Learn from the First Ten
Years? A New World Bank Report,” in Transition Newsletter
(http://worldbank.org/transitionnewsletter/janfeb2002). [5]
- Who Lost Russia?, New York Times, October 8,
2000
- Child poverty soars in eastern Europe, BBC
News, October 11, 2000
- Poverty, crime and migration are acute issues as Eastern
European cities continue to grow, A report by UN-Habitat,
January 11, 2005
- Study Finds Poverty Deepening in Former Communist
Countries, New York Times, October 12, 2000
-
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/great-recession-a-brief-etymology/
-
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1891527,00.html
-
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/the-great-recession-versus-the-great-depression/
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124874235091485463.html
Further reading
- Ambrosius, G. and W. Hibbard, A Social and Economic History
of Twentieth-Century Europe (1989)
- Bernanke, Ben S. "The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A
Comparative Approach" Journal of Money, Credit &
Banking, Vol. 27, 1995 online at
JSTOR
- Brown, Ian. The Economies of Africa and Asia in the
inter-war depression (1989)
- Davis, Joseph S., The World Between the Wars, 1919–39: An
Economist's View (1974)
- Eichengreen, Barry. Golden fetters: The gold standard and
the Great Depression, 1919–1939. 1992.
- Eichengreen, Barry, and Marc Flandreau; The Gold Standard
in Theory and History 1997 online version
- Feinstein. Charles H. The European economy between the
wars (1997)
- Friedman, Milton and Anna Jacobson Schwartz. A Monetary
History of the United States, 1867–1960 (1963), monetarist
interpretation (heavily statistical)
- Galbraith, John Kenneth,
The Great Crash, 1929 (1954)
- Garraty, John A., The Great Depression: An Inquiry into the
causes, course, and Consequences of the Worldwide Depression of the
Nineteen-Thirties, as Seen by Contemporaries and in Light of
History (1986)
- Garraty John A. Unemployment in History (1978)
- Garside, William R. Capitalism in crisis: international
responses to the Great Depression (1993)
- Goldston, Robert, The Great Depression: The United States
in the Thirties (1968)
- Haberler, Gottfried. The world economy, money, and the
great depression 1919–1939 (1976)
- Hall Thomas E. and J. David Ferguson. The Great Depression:
An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies
(1998)
- Kaiser, David E. Economic diplomacy and the origins of the
Second World War: Germany, Britain, France and Eastern Europe,
1930–1939 (1980)
- Keynes, John Maynard. "The World's Economic Outlook,"
Atlantic (May 1932), online edition
- Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression,
1929–1939 (1983)
- Gernot Kohler and Emilio José Chaves (Editors) “Globalization:
Critical Perspectives” Haupauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers
(http://www.novapublishers.com/) ISBN 1-59033-346-2. With
contributions by Samir Amin, Christopher Chase Dunn, Andre Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein
- League of Nations, World Economic Survey 1932–33
(1934)
- Madsen, Jakob B. "Trade Barriers and the Collapse of World
Trade during the Great Depression", Southern Economic
Journal, Southern Economic Journal 2001, 67(4), 848–868
online at JSTOR
- Donald Markwell, John
Maynard Keynes and International
Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace, Oxford University
Press (2006).
- Mitchell, Broadus. Depression Decade: From New Era through
New Deal, 1929–1941 (1947), 462pp; thorough coverage of the
U.S.. economy
- Mundell, R. A. "A Reconsideration of the Twentieth Century,"
The American Economic Review Vol. 90, No. 3 (Jun., 2000),
pp. 327–340 online version
- Rothermund, Dietmar. The Global Impact of the Great
Depression (1996)
- Tausch, Arno, with Christian Ghymers. "From the “Washington”
towards a “Vienna Consensus”? A quantitative analysis on
globalization, development and global governance". Hauppauge, N.Y.:
Nova Science Publishers, 2007 (for info:
https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/).
- Tausch, Arno and Almas Heshmati (Eds.) "Roadmap to Bangalore?
Globalization, the EU’s Lisbon Process and the Structures of Global
Inequality" Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, 2008, with
contributions by Franco Modigliani et al. (for info:
https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/).
- Taylor, David A. Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project
Uncovers Depression America. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley & Sons,
2009.
- Tipton, F. and R. Aldrich, An Economic and Social History
of Europe, 1890–1939 (1987)
- For 'US specific references, please see
complete listing in the Great Depression in the
United States article.
External links