The Ends of 30 Big Depressions
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 and lowering real interest rates. We do so for a sample of 30 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 clearly defined dates, it seems clear that inflationary expectations rose in the wake of departure. IV regressions and synthetic matching techniques suggest that the relationship is causal
Date: 15 June 2021, 17:00 (Tuesday, 8th week, Trinity 2021)
Venue: Held on Zoom
Speaker: Martin Ellison (with San Seok Lee and Kevin O'Rourke) (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Economic and Social History Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Melis Clark