The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed and Why?

Barry Eichengreen and Douglas Irwin

No 15142, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The Great Depression was marked by a severe outbreak of protectionist trade policies. But contrary to the presumption that all countries scrambled to raise trade barriers, there was substantial cross-country variation in the movement to protectionism. Specifically, countries that remained on the gold standard resorted to tariffs, import quotas, and exchange controls to a greater extent than countries that went off gold. Gold standard countries chose to maintain their fixed exchange rate and reduce spending on imports rather than allow their currency to depreciate. Trade protection in the 1930s was less an instance of special interest politics than second-best macroeconomic policy when monetary and fiscal policies were constrained.

JEL-codes: F02 F13 F31 F42 N70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: DAE IFM ITI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Published as Eichengreen, Barry & Irwin, Douglas A., 2010. "The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed and Why?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(04), pages 871-897, December.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15142.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed and Why? (2010)
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:nbr:nberwo:15142

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15142

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().