Ben Bernanke's Essays on the Great Depression is a collection of 9 essays written in the 80's and 90's about the financial and labor markets during the 1930's. The essays are essentially a synthesis of prior work with greater mathematical rigor. For anyone wanting to know what caused the Great Depression, without reading an entire book, please read the first essay "The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach." [...]



Bernanke's views regarding the Great Depression largely avoid the pre-80's debate over the 'money' hypothesis and 'spending' hypothesis. These views, argued by Friedman and Temin, used a quantitative analysis of the domestic markets and government policy. Instead, Bernanke assumes, and strongly supports, the view of Barry Eichengreen and Jeffery Sachs (1986) that the Gold Standard was the cause of the Great Depression. A sharp drop in the supply of money created a sharp drop in aggregate demand. Other factors, like sticky wages and prices, contributed to the Great Depression but were not the main factors. It was not until countries got off the Gold Standard that they were able to grow.



It is likely that the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England could have prevented a widespread depression between 1929-1930. However, after that period it remains doubtful whether either country could quell the Depression while maintaining the Gold Standard. It is important to note that the Great Depression was not caused by the USA alone (as commonly held before the 1980's). Bernanke is unable to explain what caused the Depression but can prove that it was not only the US (by inference the cause was international).



Due to the limited amount of statistics about the Great Depression Bernanke is forced to make MANY assumptions when building econometric models. At points his methodology becomes somewhat questionable (to his credit he often mentions this to the reader). Nevertheless, when Bernanke reaches his conclusions he is quite confident of the results (which is somewhat troubling...).



Overall: a great analysis of the Great Depression. In the academic circles, to my knowledge, Bernanke's conclusions remain the standard. (For some reason Macroeconomic textbooks seem to ignore both Beranke and Eichengreen's work -- I don't know why).

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