Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 72.128.119.220 (talk) at 19:18, 3 December 2008 (→Causes). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn starting in most places in 1929 and ending at different times in the 1930s or early 1940s for different countries. It was the largest and most important economic depression in modern history, and is used in the 21st century as an example of how far the world's economy can fall. The Great Depression originated in the United States; historians most often use as a starting date the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. The end of the depression in the U.S is associated with the onset of the war economy of World War II, beginning around 1939.

The depression had devastating effects in the developed and developing worlds. International trade was deeply affected, as were personal incomes, tax revenues, prices, and profits. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by roughly 60 percent. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as farming, mining and logging suffered the most. However, even shortly after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, optimism persisted; John D. Rockefeller said that "These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come and gone. Prosperity has always returned and will again."

The Great Depression ended at different times in different countries; for subsequent history see Home front during World War II. The majority of countries set up relief programs, and most underwent some sort of political upheaval, pushing them to the left or right. In some states, the desperate citizens turned toward nationalist demagogues - the most infamous being Adolf Hitler - setting the stage for World War II in 1939.

In early 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. Conditions were worst in farming areas, where commodity prices plunged, and in mining and logging areas, where unemployment was high and there were few other jobs. The decline in the American economy was the factor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, such as the 1930 U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.

Literature

The U.S. Depression has been the subject of much writing, as the country has sought to re-evaluate an era that caused emotional as well as financial trauma to its people. Perhaps the most noteworthy and famous novel written on the subject is The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded both the Nobel Prize for literature and the Pulitzer Prize for the work. The novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers who are forced from their home as drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agricultural industry occur during the Great Depression. Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is another important novel about a journey during the Great Depression. The Great Depression is a novella written by Alon Bersharder about a sad, disgruntled temporary worker, making the title both a homage to the historical event and a pun. Additionally, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is set during the Great Depression. Margaret Atwood's Booker prize-winning The Blind Assassin is likewise set in the Great Depression, centering on a privileged socialite's love affair with a Marxist revolutionary.

Effects

Australia

Australia's extreme dependence on agricultural and industrial exports meant it was one of the hardest-hit countries in the Western world, amongst the likes of Canada and Germany. Falling export demand and commodity prices placed massive downward pressures on wages. Further, unemployment reached a record high of almost 32% in 1932, with incidents of civil unrest becoming common. After 1932, an increase in wool and meat prices led to a gradual recovery.

Canada

Harshly impacted by both the global economic downturn and the Dust Bowl, Canadian industrial production had fallen to only 58% of the 1929 level by 1932, the second lowest level in the world after the United States, and well behind nations such as Britain, which saw it fall only to 83% of the 1929 level. Total national income fell to 56% of the 1929 level, again worse than any nation apart from the United States.

France

The Depression began to affect France from about 1931. France's relatively high degree of self-sufficiency meant the damage was considerably less than in nations like Germany. However, hardship and unemployment were high enough to lead to rioting and the rise of the socialist Popular Front.

Germany

Germany's Weimar Republic was hit hard by the depression, as American loans to help rebuild the German economy now stopped. Unemployment soared, especially in larger cities, and the political system veered toward extremism. Repayment of the war reparations due by Germany were suspended in 1932 following the Lausanne Conference of 1932. By that time Germany had repaid 1/8th of the reparations. Hitler's Nazi Party came to power in January 1933.

Japan

The Great Depression did not strongly affect Japan. The Japanese economy shrank by 8% during 1929–31. However, Japan's Minister of Finance (MoF) Osachi Hamaguchi implemented the first version of Keynesian economic policies: first, by increasing deficit spending; and second, by devaluing the currency. The MoF believed that the deficit spending could easily be paid for when productivity improved.

The devaluation of the currency had an immediate effect. Japanese textiles began to displace British textiles in export markets. The deficit spending, however proved to be most profound. The deficit spending went into the purchase of munitions for the armed forces. By 1933, Japan was already out of the depression. By 1934 the MoF realized that the economy was in danger of overheating, and to avoid inflation, moved to reduce the deficit spending that went towards armaments and munitions. This resulted in a strong and swift negative reaction from nationalists, especially those in the Army, culminating in an assassination attempt on the MoF, leading to his eventual demise from poor health some months later. This had a chilling effect on all civilian bureaucrats in the Japanese government. From 1934, the military's dominance of the government continued to grow. Instead of reducing deficit spending, the government introduced price controls and rationing schemes that reduced, but did not eliminate inflation, which would remain a problem until the end of World War II.

The deficit spending had a transformative effect on Japan. Japan's industrial production doubled during the 1930s. Further, in 1929 the list of the largest firms in Japan was dominated by light industries, especially textile companies (many of Japan's automakers, like Toyota, have their roots in the textile industry). By 1940 light industry had been displaced by heavy industry as the largest firms inside the Japanese economy. (For more on the Japanese economy in the 1930s see "MITI and the Japanese Miracle" by Chalmers Johnson).

These events helped set the stage for World War II. In 1929, Japan's GNP was about a sixth of the U.S. and its per capita GNP was about a third. However, during the 1930s, the U.S. economy contracted by a third. By 1939, Japan's GNP was nearly half that of the United States, and its per capita GNP was nearly equal to the United States. Faced with having to face two Oceans, it was easy to see how some Japanese planners felt that they had an even chance against the U.S. What they may not have considered is that the U.S. had yet to truly kick in deficit financing for munitions until after 1940 - where upon the United States would experience its own doubling of industrial production in four short years.

Latin America

Because of high levels of United States investment in Latin American economies, they were severely damaged by the Depression. Within the region, Chile, Bolivia and Peru were particularly badly affected. One result of the Depression in this area was the rise of fascist movements.

Netherlands

From roughly 1931 until 1937, the Netherlands suffered a deep and exceptionally long depression. This depression was partly caused by the after-effects of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 in the United States, and partly by internal factors in the Netherlands. Government policy, especially the very late dropping of the Gold Standard, played a role in prolonging the depression. The Great Depression in the Netherlands led to some political instability and riots, and can be linked to the rise of the Dutch national-socialist party NSB. The depression in the Netherlands eased off somewhat at the end of 1936, when the government finally dropped the Gold Standard, but real economic stability did not return until after World War II.

South Africa

As world trade slumped, demand for South African agricultural and mineral exports fell drastically. It is believed that the social discomfort caused by the depression was a contributing factor in the 1933 split between the "gesuiwerde" (purified) and "smelter" (fusionist) factions within the National Party and the National Party's subsequent fusion with the South African Party.

Soviet Union

Having removed itself from the capitalist world system both by choice and as a result of efforts of the capitalist powers to isolate it, the Great Depression had little effect on the Soviet Union. This was a period of industrial expansion for the USSR as it recovered from revolution and civil war, and its apparent immunity to the Great Depression seemed to validate the theory of Marxism and contributed to Socialist and Communist agitation in affected nations. This in turn increased fears of Communist revolution in the West, strengthening support for anti-Communists, both moderate and extreme.

United Kingdom

United States

Early response

Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon advised President Hoover that shock treatment would be the best response: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.... That will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people." Hoover rejected this advice, and started numerous programs, all of which failed to reverse the downturn.

Hoover launched a series of programs to increase farm prices, which failed, expanded federal spending in public works such as dams, and launched the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which aided cities, banks and railroads, and continued as a major agency under the New Deal. To provide unemployment relief he set up the Emergency Relief Agency (ERA) that operated until 1935 as the Federal Emergency Relief Agency. Quarter by quarter the economy went downhill, as prices, profits and employment fell, leading to the political realignment in 1932 that brought to power the New Deal.

The New Deal

Shortly after President Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, drought and erosion combined to cause the Dust Bowl, shifting hundreds of thousands of displaced persons off their farms in the midwest. From his inauguration onward, Roosevelt argued that restructuring of the economy would be needed to prevent another depression or avoid prolonging the current one. New Deal programs sought to stimulate demand and provide work and relief for the impoverished through increased government spending and institute financial reforms. The Securities Act of 1933 comprehensively regulated the securities industry. This was followed by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 which created the Securities and Exchange Commission. Though amended, key provisions of both Acts are still in force. Federal insurance of bank deposits was provided by the FDIC, and the Glass-Steagall Act. The institution of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) remains a controversial act to this day. The NRA made a number of sweeping changes to the American economy until it was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1935.

Early changes by the Roosevelt administration included:

• Instituting regulations to fight deflationary "cut-throat competition" through the NRA.
• Setting minimum prices and wages, labor standards, and competitive conditions in all industries through the NRA.
• Encouraging unions that would raise wages, to increase the purchasing power of the working class.
• Cutting farm production to raise prices through the Agricultural Adjustment Act and its successors.
• Forcing businesses to work with government to set price codes through the NRA.

These reforms, together with several other relief and recovery measures are called the First New Deal. New regulations and attempts at economic stimulus through a new alphabet soup of agencies set up in 1933 and 1934 and previously extant agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation did not halt economic stagnation. By 1935, the "Second New Deal" added Social Security, a national relief agency (the Works Progress Administration, WPA) and, through the National Labor Relations Board, a strong stimulus to the growth of labor unions. Unemployment declined by over one-third in Roosevelt's first term (from 25% to 14.3%, 1933 to 1937), but faster than the economic upturn came 1938's "recession within a depression" and unemployment zoomed to 19%, then declined somewhat until the draft to fight World War II lowered it more. In 1929, federal expenditures constituted only 3% of the GDP. Expenditures as a proportion of GDP tripled between 1933 and 1939, accompanied by sizable deficits. The debt as a proportion of GNP rose under Hoover from 20% to 40%. Roosevelt kept it at 40% until the war began, when it soared to 128%. After the Recession of 1937, conservatives were able to form a bipartisan conservative coalition to stop further expansion of the New Deal and, by 1943, had abolished all of the relief programs. In 1946, large-scale relaxation of government controls over the wartime economy, including a sharp reduction of taxes, allowed for increased innovation in consumer goods and a marked increase in consumer spending. Unemployment rates also returned to normal levels.

Recession of 1937

In 1937 the American economy took an unexpected nosedive, lasting through most of 1938. Production declined sharply, as did profits and employment. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938. The Roosevelt administration reacted by launching a rhetorical campaign against monopoly power, which was cast as the cause of the depression, and by appointing Thurman Arnold to act; Arnold's effectiveness ended once World War II began and corporate energies had to be directed to winning the war.

The administration's other response to the 1937 deepening of the Great Depression had more tangible results. Ignoring the pleas of the Treasury Department, Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression, reluctantly abandoning his efforts to balance the budget and launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938, an effort to increase mass purchasing power. Business-oriented observers explained the recession and recovery in very different terms from the Keynesians. They argued that the New Deal had been very hostile to business expansion in 1935–37, had encouraged massive strikes which had a negative impact on major industries such as automobiles, and had threatened massive antitrust legal attacks on big corporations. All those threats diminished sharply after 1938. For example, the antitrust efforts fizzled out without major cases. The CIO and AFL unions started battling each other more than with the corporations, and tax policy became more favorable to long-term growth, according to this argument.

On the other hand, according to economist Robert Higgs, when looking only at the supply of consumer goods, significant GDP growth resumed only in 1946 (Higgs does not estimate the value to consumers of collective, intangible goods like victory in war). To Keynesians, the war economy showed just how large the fiscal stimulus required to end the downturn of the Depression was, and it led, at the time, to fears that as soon as America demobilized, it would return to Depression conditions, and industrial output would fall to pre-war levels. That incorrect Keynesian prediction that a new depression would start after the war failed to take into account massive savings and pent-up consumer demand, along with the ending of the restrictive wartime regulations in most consumer industries, and the cutting of high tax rates starting in 1946. In any case, government spending and changing regulations (first tightening them, then loosening them) appear to have contributed to the recovery, as consumer and producer behavior changed.

Keynesian models

In the early 1930s, before John Maynard Keynes wrote The General Theory, he was advocating public works programs and deficits as a way to get the British economy out of the Depression. Although Keynes never mentions fiscal policy in The General Theory, and instead advocates the need to socialize investments, Keynes ushered in more of a theoretical revolution than a policy one. His basic idea was simple: to keep people fully employed, governments have to run deficits when the economy is slowing because the private sector will not invest enough to increase production and reverse the recession.

As the Depression wore on, Roosevelt tried public works, farm subsidies, and other devices to restart the economy, but never completely gave up trying to balance the budget. According to the Keynesians, he needed to spend much more money; they were unable to say how much more. With fiscal policy, however, government could provide the needed Keynesian spending by decreasing taxes, increasing government spending, and increasing individuals' incomes. As incomes increased, they would spend more. As they spent more, the multiplier effect would take over and expand the effect on the initial spending. The Keynesians did not estimate what the size of the multiplier was. Keynesian economists assumed poor people would spend new incomes; however, they saved much of the new money; that is, they paid back debts owed to landlords, grocers and family , which might have then spent the money. Keynesian ideas of the consumption function have been challenged, most notably in the 1950s by Milton Friedman and Franco Modigliani.

Neoclassical approach

Recent work from a neoclassical perspective focuses on the decline in productivity that caused the initial decline in output and a prolonged recovery due to policies that affected the labor market. This work, collected by Kehoe and Prescott, decomposes the economic decline into a decline in the labor force, capital stock, and the productivity with which these inputs are used. This study suggests that theories of the Great Depression have to explain an initial severe decline but rapid recovery in productivity, relatively little change in the capital stock, and a prolonged depression in the labor force. This analysis rejects theories that focus on the role of savings and posit a decline in the capital stock.

Gold standard

Every major currency left the gold standard during the Great Depression. Great Britain was the first to do so. Facing speculative attacks on the pound and depleting gold reserves, in September 1931 the Bank of England ceased exchanging pound notes for gold and the pound was floated on foreign exchange markets.

Great Britain, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries left the gold standard in 1931. Other countries, such as Italy and the United States, remained on the gold standard into 1932 or 1933, while a few countries in the so-called "gold bloc", led by France and including Poland, Belgium and Switzerland, stayed on the standard until 1935-1936.

According to later analysis, the earliness with which a country left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery. For example, Great Britain and Scandinavia, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which had a silver standard, almost avoided the depression entirely. The connection between leaving the gold standard as a strong predictor of that country's severity of its depression and the length of time of its recovery has been shown to be consistent for dozens of countries, including developing countries. This partly explains why the experience and length of the depression differed between national economies .

Rearmament and recovery

The massive rearmament policies to counter the threat from Nazi Germany helped stimulate the economies of Europe in 1937-39. By 1937, unemployment in Britain had fallen to 1.5 million. The mobilization of manpower following the outbreak of war in 1939 finally ended unemployment.

In the United States, the massive war spending doubled the GNP, either masking the effects of the Depression or essentially ending the Depression. Businessmen ignored the mounting national debt and heavy new taxes, redoubling their efforts for greater output to take advantage of generous government contracts. Productivity soared: most people worked overtime and gave up leisure activities to make money after so many hard years. People accepted rationing and price controls for the first time as a way of expressing their support for the war effort. Cost-plus pricing in munitions contracts guaranteed businesses a profit no matter how many mediocre workers they employed or how inefficient the techniques they used. The demand was for a vast quantity of war supplies as soon as possible, regardless of cost. Businesses hired every person in sight, even driving sound trucks up and down city streets begging people to apply for jobs. New workers were needed to replace the 11 million working-age men serving in the military. These events magnified the role of the federal government in the national economy. In 1929, federal expenditures accounted for only 3% of GNP. Between 1933 and 1939, federal expenditure tripled, and Roosevelt's critics charged that he was turning America into a socialist state. However, spending on the New Deal was far smaller than on the war effort.

Political consequences

The crisis had many political consequences, among which was the abandonment of classic economic liberal approaches, which Roosevelt replaced in the United States with Keynesian policies. It was a main factor in the implementation of social democracy and planned economies in European countries after World War II. (see Marshall Plan). Although Austrian economists had challenged Keynesianism since the 1920s, it was not until 1974, when the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Friedrich Hayek notably for being "one of the few economists who gave warning of the possibility of a major economic crisis before the great crash came in the autumn of 1929" , and the beginning of monetarism, that the Keynesian approach was politically questioned, leading the way to neoliberalism.

Facts and figures

Effects of depression:

• 13 million people became unemployed.
• Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between the years 1929 and 1932.
• Home-building dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932.
• From the years 1929 to 1932, about 5000 banks went out of business.

Other Great Depressions

There have been other downturns called a "Great Depression," but none has been as worldwide for so long. British economic historians use the term "Great depression" to describe British conditions in the late 19th century, especially in agriculture, 1873-1896, a period also referred to as the Long Depression. Several Latin American countries had severe downturns in the 1980s. Finnish economists refer to the Finnish economic decline around the breakup of the Soviet Union (1989-1994) as a great depression. Kehoe and Prescott define a great depression to be a period of diminished economic output with at least one year where output is 20% below the trend. By this definition Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico experienced great depressions in the 1980s, and Argentina experienced another in 1998-2002. This definition also includes the economic performance of New Zealand from 1974-1992 and Switzerland from 1973 to the present, although this designation for Switzerland has been controversial.

See also

Template:Multicol

• Aftermath of World War I
• America's Great Depression written by Murray Rothbard.
• Arthurdale
• Business cycle
• Cities in the Great Depression
• Depression cake
• Economic collapse

Template:Multicol-break

• Gold as an investment
• Great Contraction
• Ivar Kreuger
• Keynesian economics
• Long Depression
• New Deal
• Recession
• Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
• Wall Street Crash of 1929

Template:Multicol-end

Notes

1. L. Engerman, Stanley. The Cambridge Economic History of the United States. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
2. "Commodity Data". US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
3. Cochrane, Willard W. (1958). "Farm Prices, Myth and Reality": 15. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
4. "World Economic Survey 1932–33". League of Nations: 43.
5. Hakim, Joy (1995). A History of Us: War, Peace and all that Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195094840.
6. Schultz, Stanley K. (1999). "Crashing Hopes: The Great Depression". American History 102: Civil War to the Present. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved 2008-03-13..
7. Hoover, Herbert. "3:9". The memoirs of Herbert Hoover.
8. Waren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
9. Kehoe, Timothy J.; Prescott, Edward C. (2007). Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
10. Bernanke, Ben (March 2, 2004), "Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke: Money, Gold and the Great Depression", At the H. Parker Willis Lecture in Economic Policy, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
11. Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Coming of the New Deal: 1933-1935. Paperback ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. (First published in 1958) ISBN 0618340866; Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936. Paperback ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. (First published in 1960) ISBN 0618340874
12. ECONOMICS PRIZE FOR WORKS IN ECONOMIC THEORY AND INTER-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
13. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7655472.stm
14. T. W. Fletcher, "The Great Depression of English Agriculture 1873-1896," The Economic History Review, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1961), pp. 417-432 in JSTOR
15. Abrahamsen Y, R.; Aeppli, E.; Atukeren, M.; Graff, C.; Müller; Schips, B. (2005). "The Swiss disease: Facts and artefacts. A reply to Kehoe and Prescott". Review of Economic Dynamics. 8 (3): 749–758. doi:10.1016/j.red.2004.06.003.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
16. Kehoe, T. J.; Ruhl, K. J. (2005). "Is Switzerland in a Great Depression?". 8. Review of Economic Dynamics: 759–775. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Further reading

• Ambrosius, G. and W. Hibbard, A Social and Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe (1989)
• Bernanke, Ben S. "The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach" Journal of Money, Credit & Banking, Vol. 27, 1995 online at JSTOR
• Brown, Ian. The Economies of Africa and Asia in the inter-war depression (1989)
• Davis, Joseph S., The World Between the Wars, 1919-39: An Economist's View (1974)
• Eichengreen, Barry. Golden fetters: The gold standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939. 1992.
• Barry Eichengreen and Marc Flandreau; The Gold Standard in Theory and History 1997 online version
• Feinstein. Charles H. The European economy between the wars (1997)
• Friedman, Milton and Anna Jacobson Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (1963), monetarist interpretation (heavily statistical)
• Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Great Crash, 1929 (1954)
• Garraty, John A., The Great Depression: An Inquiry into the causes, course, and Consequences of the Worldwide Depression of the Nineteen-Thirties, as Seen by Contemporaries and in Light of History (1986)
• Garraty John A. Unemployment in History (1978)
• Garside, William R. Capitalism in crisis: international responses to the Great Depression (1993)
• Haberler, Gottfried. The world economy, money, and the great depression 1919-1939 (1976)
• Hall Thomas E. and J. David Ferguson. The Great Depression: An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies (1998)
• Kaiser, David E. Economic diplomacy and the origins of the Second World War: Germany, Britain, France and Eastern Europe, 1930-1939 (1980)
• Keynes, John Maynard. "The World's Economic Outlook," Atlantic (May 1932), online edition
• Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (1983)
• Gernot Kohler and Emilio José Chaves (Editors) “Globalization: Critical Perspectives” Haupauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers (http://www.novapublishers.com/) ISBN 1-59033-346-2. With contributions by Samir Amin, Christopher Chase Dunn, Andre Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein
• League of Nations, World Economic Survey 1932-33 (1934)
• Madsen, Jakob B. "Trade Barriers and the Collapse of World Trade during the Great Depression", Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Journal 2001, 67(4), 848-868 online at JSTOR
• Mundell, R. A. "A Reconsideration of the Twentieth Century," The American Economic Review Vol. 90, No. 3 (Jun., 2000), pp. 327–340 online version
• Rothermund, Dietmar. The Global Impact of the Great Depression (1996)
• Tausch, Arno, with Christian Ghymers. "From the “Washington” towards a “Vienna Consensus”? A quantitative analysis on globalization, development and global governance". Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, 2007 (for info: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/).
• Tausch, Arno and Almas Heshmati (Eds.) "Roadmap to Bangalore? Globalization, the EU’s Lisbon Process and the Structures of Global Inequality" Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, 2008, with contributions by Franco Modigliani et al. (for info: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/).
• Tipton, F. and R. Aldrich, An Economic and Social History of Europe, 1890–1939 (1987)

For US specific references, please see complete listing in the Great Depression in the United States article.

External links

• Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century, edited by T. J. Kehoe and E. C. Prescott
• Theories of the Great Depression, R. L. Norman, Jr.
• America in the 1930s. Very large multi-mediated project on America in the Great Depression
• Recession? Depression? What's the difference? (About.com)
• An Overview of the Great Depression from EH.NET by Randall Parker.
• Great Myths of the Great Depression by Lawrence Reed
• Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum for copyright-free photos of the period
• Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure by Murray Rothbard (1969)
• The Impact of the Great Depression in NI, on the Second World War online resource for NI
• Great Depression in the Deep South
• Lessons from the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression How to to avoid a 2008 Remake of the Keynesian Debacle

• 1930s
• Business cycle
• Great Depression
• Financial crises