Recently, research on the causes of the Great Depression has shifted from a heavy emphasis on events in the United States to a broader, more comparative approach that examines the interwar experiences of many countries simultaneously. In this lecture I survey the current state of our knowledge...

Recent research has provided strong circumstantial evidence for the proposition that sustained deflation -- the result of a mismanaged international gold standard -- was a major cause of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Less clear is the mechanism by which deflation led to depression. In this...

This paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period. Our approach is complementary to that of Friedman and Schwartz, who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures; we focus on non-monetary (primarily credit-related)...