The Ends of 30 Big Depressions

Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke, Sang Seok Lee and Martin Ellison
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke

No 20200035, Working Papers from New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science

Abstract: How did countries recover from the Great Depression? In this paper we explore the argument that leaving the gold standard helped by boosting inflationary expectations and lowering real interest rates. We do so for a sample of 30 countries, using modern nowcasting methods and a new dataset containing more than 230,000 monthly and quarterly observations for over 1,500 variables. In those cases where the departure from gold happened on clearly defined dates, it seems clear that inflationary expectations rose in the wake of departure. Synthetic matching techniques suggest that the relationship is causal.

Pages: 80 pages
Date: 2020-01, Revised 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: The Ends of 30 Big Depressions (2020)
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