Understanding the Great Depression in the United States versus Canada

Pierre Siklos

Chapter 2 in The World Economy and National Economies in the Interwar Slump, 2003, pp 27-57 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract It is now recognized that the Great Depression should be viewed as a global phenomenon with its roots in the gold standard so arduously restored in Great Britain in 1925. Temin (1989) and Eichengreen (1992) provide arguably the best recent accounts of the Great Depression. Not surprisingly, it has generated a vast literature, and continues to this day to fascinate economists and social scientists more generally. Unlike Friedman and Schwartz (1963, 1982), whose masterful works documented the role of monetary policy in explaining both the depth of the US Depression and its propagation outside the United States, Temin (1989) stresses the influence of a large ‘economic’ shock which was then magnified by an almost slavish adherence to the gold standard. Eichengreen (1992) would not disagree but would emphasize the breakdown in international cooperation among government and central bank officials. Others, such as Kindleberger (1986), might argue instead that the collapse of the post First World War monetary order produced financial chaos which, like the now much discussed ‘Asian flu’ of the late 1990s, caught on across much of the world.

Keywords: Exchange Rate; Interest Rate; Monetary Policy; Business Cycle; Money Supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-53668-5_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230536685

DOI: 10.1057/9780230536685_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().