Journal article icon

Journal article

The ends of 27 big depressions

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, lowering real interest rates, and stimulating interest-sensitive expenditures. We do so for a sample of 27 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 well-defined dates, inflationary expectations clearly rose in the wake of departure. Instrumental variable, difference-in-difference, and synthetic matching techniques suggest that the relationship is causal.
Publication status:
Published
Peer review status:
Peer reviewed

Actions


Access Document


Files:
Publisher copy:
10.1257/aer.20221479

Authors


More by this author
Institution:
University of Oxford
Division:
SSD
Department:
Economics
Role:
Author


Publisher:
American Economic Association
Journal:
American Economic Review More from this journal
Volume:
114
Issue:
1
Pages:
134-68
Publication date:
2024-01-01
Acceptance date:
2023-09-18
DOI:
EISSN:
1944-7981
ISSN:
0002-8282


Language:
English
Pubs id:
1569546
Local pid:
pubs:1569546
Deposit date:
2023-11-22

Terms of use



Views and Downloads






If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record

TO TOP