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The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was the most traumatic event of the twentieth century. It ushered in substantial expansions in the role of governments around the world, focused attention on social insurance, and for a time bolstered socialist economic ideas as a form of cure. Skepticism about the effectiveness of government withered as the free market failed, and it seems safe to say that Keynesian economics would not have flourished if the depression had not occurred. While this severe contraction has been extensively examined, we are just now—thanks to increasingly sophisticated analytical techniques—beginning to comprehend its causes and the reasons for the extremely slow recovery that occurred in the United States. Much of this analysis, though, remains in specialized studies that are visited mainly by economists and economic historians. In Rethinking the Great Depression, Gene Smiley draws upon this recent scholarship to present a clear and nontechnical analysis for the general reader. He explains the roots of the depression in the 1920s, the efforts of the New Deal to combat the economic crisis, and the legacy of these efforts in World War II and the postwar years. He offers new insights and some surprising conclusions: that the causes of the Great Depression lay in the dislocations caused by World War I and the attempt to reconstitute an international gold standard in the 1920s; that the New Deal, regardless of its good intentions, adopted misguided fiscal and monetary policies that prolonged the depression in the United States beyond what it should have been; that World War II, rather than stimulating an end to the depression, actually postponed a full recovery until 1946.
This is an enjoyable and immensely readable book which combines in interview format, reflections by prominent economists on contemporary and subsequent explanations of the Great Depression with what Bernanke in his foreword refers to as highbrow gossip concerning the lives and experiences of those selected economists who lived through the era. W.R. Garside, Australian Economic History Review The tone of the book is broad, and it moves fluidly between discussion of grand intellectual debates about what mattered, personal thoughts of the interviewer and his subjects, formative experiences, events and gossip. Christopher M. Meissner, The International History Review This volume is built around transcripts of interviews conducted in 1997 and 1998 with 11 noteworthy economists who had been graduate students in the 1930s. They were invited to reflect on how the Great Depression affected them, both personally and professionally. As Ben S. Bernanke remarks in the foreword, this is first-rate highbrow gossip . The result is both instructive and entertaining. William J. Barber, Journal of Economic History The interviews with famous senior economists contained in this enjoyable book achieve two important, and quite distinct, goals. First, they provide invaluable insights into the history of theorizing about the Depression. In these conversations we see the struggles of the brightest young economists of their generation to reconcile old paradigms of the efficiency and optimality of free markets with the hard facts of mass unemployment and economic collapse they saw around them in the 1930s. In their attempts to find new answers we see the roots of current ideas and debates in economics. These interviews do an excellent job of recapturing the sense of uncertainty, the feeling of grappling with an intractable puzzle, that almost every one of these economists experienced. The second achievement of these interviews is to provide, well, first-rate highbrow gossip. The interviewees are outstanding economists but they are also an exceptional group of people. They hail from around the world, from a variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Each, in one way or the other, found his or her way to professional prominence, often in the face of substantial adversity. From the foreword by Ben S. Bernanke, Princeton University, US It is an accepted truism that the Great Depression did more for the development of modern economics than any other single event. Some of the greatest economists of the twentieth century were inspired to go into the field as a direct result of their experiences during this period. This book explores the most prominent economic explanations of the Great Depression and how it affected the lives, experiences, and subsequent thinking of economists who lived through that era. Presented in interview format, this collection of conversations with Moses Abramovitz, Morris Adelman, Milton Friedman, Albert Hart, Charles Kindleberger, Wassily Leontief, Paul Samuelson, Anna Schwartz, James Tobin, Herbert Stein and Victor Zarnowitz provides a record of their reflections on the economics of the Great Depression and on the major events which occurred during those critical years. This volume is also another chapter in the legacy of the interwar generation of economists and is intended as a token of gratitude for the contributions they have made to the economics profession. Randall Parker has given us a window into the lives of these gifted scholars and an important glimpse into the world that shaped them. Any student or scholar of economics will find this homage to and record of the brightest voices to come out of this critical time to be indispensable.
Eric Maisel invites depression sufferers and their service providers to consider whether human sadness has been monetised into the disease of depression and asks readers to consider the personal implications of this 50 year cultural shift from human problem to medical ailment.
"Thought provoking and fresh - this book challenges how we think about economics.” Gillian Tett, Financial Times For further information about recent publicity events and media coverage for Rethinking Capitalism please visit http://marianamazzucato.com/rethinking-capitalism/ Western capitalism is in crisis. For decades investment has been falling, living standards have stagnated or declined, and inequality has risen dramatically. Economic policy has neither reformed the financial system nor restored stable growth. Climate change meanwhile poses increasing risks to future prosperity. In this book some of the world’s leading economists propose new ways of thinking about capitalism. In clear and compelling prose, each chapter shows how today’s deep economic problems reflect the inadequacies of orthodox economic theory and the failure of policies informed by it. The chapters examine a range of contemporary economic issues, including fiscal and monetary policy, financial markets and business behaviour, inequality and privatisation, and innovation and environmental change. The authors set out alternative economic approaches which better explain how capitalism works, why it often doesn’t, and how it can be made more innovative, inclusive and sustainable. Outlining a series of far-reaching policy reforms, Rethinking Capitalism offers a powerful challenge to mainstream economic debate, and new ideas to transform it.
Author : John F. McDonald Publisher : Taylor & Francis Page : 259 pages File Size : 22,52 MB Release : 2021-09-12 Category : Business & Economics ISBN : 1000434699
Macroeconomics has always played host to contesting schools of thought, but recent events have exacerbated those differences. To fully understand the subject, students need to be aware of these controversies. Rethinking Macroeconomics: A History of Economic Thought Perspective introduces students to the key schools of thought, equipping them with the knowledge needed for a true understanding of today’s economy. The text guides the reader through multiple approaches to macroeconomic analysis before presenting the data for several critical economic episodes, all in order to explore which analytical method provides the best explanation for each event. It covers key background information on topics such as the basics of supply and demand, macroeconomic data, international trade and the balance of payments, the creation of the money supply, and the global financial crisis. This anticipated second edition contains new chapters on Modern Monetary Theory, the Japanese economy, the European Union, and the COVID-19 crisis, bringing the story up to date and broadening the international coverage. Offering the context that is missing from existing introductory textbooks, this work encourages students to think critically about received economic wisdom. This is the ideal complement to any introductory macroeconomics textbook and is ideally suited for undergraduate students who have completed a principles of economics course. The book is fully supported with additional online resources, which include lecture slides and an instructor manual.
In this highly original piece of work, Steven D. Gjerstad and Nobel Laureate Vernon L. Smith analyze the role of housing and its associated mortgage financing as a key element of economic cycles. The authors combine data from both laboratory and real markets to provide insight into the bubble propensity of real-world economic actors and use novel historical analysis on the Great Recession, the Great Depression, and all of the post-World War II recessions to establish the critical roles of housing, private-capital investment, and household and private institutional balance sheets in economic cycles. They develop a model that incorporates household balance sheets and bank balance sheets and offers insights based on this analysis concerning policy going forward, effectively changing the way economists think about economic cycles.
The New Deal shaped our nation's politics for decades, and was seen by many as tantamount to the "American Way" itself. Now, in this superb compact history, Eric Rauchway offers an informed account of the New Deal and the Great Depression, illuminating its successes and failures. Rauchway first describes how the roots of the Great Depression lay in America's post-war economic policies--described as "laissez-faire with a vengeance"--which in effect isolated our nation from the world economy just when the world needed the United States most. He shows how the magnitude of the resulting economic upheaval, and the ineffectiveness of the old ways of dealing with financial hardships, set the stage for Roosevelt's vigorous (and sometimes unconstitutional) Depression-fighting policies. Indeed, Rauchway stresses that the New Deal only makes sense as a response to this global economic disaster. The book examines a key sampling of New Deal programs, ranging from the National Recovery Agency and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the Public Works Administration and Social Security, revealing why some worked and others did not. In the end, Rauchway concludes, it was the coming of World War II that finally generated the political will to spend the massive amounts of public money needed to put Americans back to work. And only the Cold War saw the full implementation of New Deal policies abroad--including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Today we can look back at the New Deal and, for the first time, see its full complexity. Rauchway captures this complexity in a remarkably short space, making this book an ideal introduction to one of the great policy revolutions in history. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, and Literary Theory to History. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given topic. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how it has developed and influenced society. Whatever the area of study, whatever the topic that fascinates the reader, the series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.
Author : Alan S. Blinder Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation Page : 375 pages File Size : 30,84 MB Release : 2013-01-03 Category : Business & Economics ISBN : 1610448154
Some economic events are so major and unsettling that they “change everything.” Such is the case with the financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007 and is still a drag on the world economy. Yet enough time has now elapsed for economists to consider questions that run deeper than the usual focus on the immediate causes and consequences of the crisis. How have these stunning events changed our thinking about the role of the financial system in the economy, about the costs and benefits of financial innovation, about the efficiency of financial markets, and about the role the government should play in regulating finance? In Rethinking the Financial Crisis, some of the nation’s most renowned economists share their assessments of particular aspects of the crisis and reconsider the way we think about the financial system and its role in the economy. In its wide-ranging inquiry into the financial crash, Rethinking the Financial Crisis marshals an impressive collection of rigorous and yet empirically-relevant research that, in some respects, upsets the conventional wisdom about the crisis and also opens up new areas for exploration. Two separate chapters–by Burton G. Malkiel and by Hersh Shefrin and Meir Statman – debate whether the facts of the financial crisis upend the efficient market hypothesis and require a more behavioral account of financial market performance. To build a better bridge between the study of finance and the “real” economy of production and employment, Simon Gilchrist and Egan Zakrasjek take an innovative measure of financial stress and embed it in a model of the U.S. economy to assess how disruptions in financial markets affect economic activity—and how the Federal Reserve might do monetary policy better. The volume also examines the crucial role of financial innovation in the evolution of the pre-crash financial system. Thomas Philippon documents the huge increase in the size of the financial services industry relative to real GDP, and also the increasing cost per financial transaction. He suggests that the finance industry of 1900 was just as able to produce loans, bonds, and stocks as its modern counterpart—and it did so more cheaply. Robert Jarrow looks in detail at some of the major types of exotic securities developed by financial engineers, such as collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, reaching judgments on which make the real economy more efficient and which do not. The volume’s final section turns explicitly to regulatory matters. Robert Litan discusses the political economy of financial regulation before and after the crisis. He reviews the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which he considers an imperfect but useful response to a major breakdown in market and regulatory discipline. At a time when the financial sector continues to be a source of considerable controversy, Rethinking the Financial Crisis addresses important questions about the complex workings of American finance and shows how the study of economics needs to change to deepen our understanding of the indispensable but risky role that the financial system plays in modern economies.
Until recently, historians tended to dismiss home economics as little more than a conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen. This landmark volume initiates collaboration among home economists, family and consumer science professionals, and women's historians. What knits the essays together is a willingness to revisit the subject of home economics with neither indictment nor apology. The volume includes significant new work that places home economics in the twentieth century within the context of the development of women's professions. Rethinking Home Economics documents the evolution of a profession from the home economics movement launched by Ellen Richards in the early twentieth century to the modern field renamed Family and Consumer Sciences in 1994. The essays in this volume show the range of activities pursued under the rubric of home economics, from dietetics and parenting, teaching and cooperative extension work, to test kitchen and product development. Exploration of the ways in which gender, race, and class influenced women's options in colleges and universities, hospitals, business, and industry, as well as government has provided a greater understanding of the obstacles women encountered and the strategies they used to gain legitimacy as the field developed.