Devaluation, Exports, and Recovery from the Great Depression

Jason Lennard and Meredith Paker

No 2403, Discussion Papers from Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM)

Abstract: This paper evaluates how a major policy shift - the suspension of the gold standard in September1931 - affected employment outcomes in interwar Britain. We use a new high-frequency industry-level dataset and difference-in-differences techniques to isolate the impact of devaluation on exporters. At the micro level, we find that the break from gold reduced the unemployment rate by 2.7 percentage points for export-intensive industries relative to more closed industries. At the aggregate level, this effect stimulated the labor market, the fiscal outlook, and economic growth. Devaluation was therefore an important initial spark of recovery from the depths of the Great Depression.

Keywords: exports; gold standard; interwar Britain; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 F41 J64 N14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.lse.ac.uk/CFM/assets/pdf/CFM-Discussio ... MDP2024-03-Paper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Devaluation, exports, and recovery from the Great Depression (2024)
Working Paper: Devaluation, Exports, and Recovery from the Great Depression (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cfm:wpaper:2403

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Helen Power ().