Die Ursachen der beiden größten ökonomischen Katastrophen in den letzten 100 Jahren – die Weltwirtschaftskrise in den 1930er-Jahren und die Finanzkrise seit 2008 – gleichen einander wie ein Ei dem anderen. Beide entstanden infolge eines krassen Kreditbooms, dubioser Bankpraktiken sowie...

The Great Depression was marked by a severe outbreak of protectionist trade policies. But contrary to the presumption that all countries scrambled to raise trade barriers, there was substantial cross-country variation in the movement to protectionism. Specifically, countries that remained on the...

The Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Credit Crisis of the 2000s had similar causes but elicited strikingly different policy responses. It may still be too early to assess the effectiveness of current policy responses, but it is possible to analyze monetary and fiscal policies in the...

We describe in this essay why the gold standard and the euro are extreme forms of fixed exchange rates, and how these policies had their most potent effects in the worst peaceful economic periods in modern times. While we are lucky to have avoided another catastrophe like the Great Depression in...

"There have been two global financial crises in the past century: the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession that began in 2008. Both featured loose credit, precarious real estate and stock market bubbles, suspicious banking practices, an inflexible monetary system, and global...