Two Great Trade Collapses: The Interwar Period & Great Recession Compared

Kevin O'Rourke

No 12286, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: In this paper, I offer some preliminary comparisons between the trade collapses of the Great Depression and Great Recession. The commodity composition of the two trade collapses was quite similar, but the latter collapse was much sharper due to the spread of manufacturing across the globe during the intervening period. The increasing importance of manufacturing also meant that the trade collapse was more geographically balanced in the later episode. Protectionism was much more severe during the 1930s than after 2008, and in the UK case at least helped to skew the direction of trade away from multilateralism and towards Empire. This had dangerous political consequences.

Keywords: Trade collapse; Great recession; Great depression; Protectionism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 N70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12286 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Two Great Trade Collapses: The Interwar Period & Great Recession Compared (2017)
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:cpr:ceprdp:12286

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12286

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().