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

Kevin O'Rourke

No 23825, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

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
Note: DAE ITI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke, 2018. "Two Great Trade Collapses: The Interwar Period and Great Recession Compared," IMF Economic Review, vol 66(3), pages 418-439.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23825.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:23825

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23825

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 ().