Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Currency Crisis and Unemployment: Sterling in 1931

Contents:

Author Info

  • Eichengreen, Barry
  • Jeanne, Olivier

Abstract

This paper studies the role of unemployment in sterling’s inter-war experience. According to most narrative accounts, the proximate cause of the 1931 sterling crisis was a high and rising unemployment rate that placed pressure on British governments to pursue reflationary policies. We present a model which, in the spirit of the ‘second generation’ approach to currency crises, highlights the conflict between the objective of low unemployment and defence of the currency and show that it can reproduce the main features of sterling’s inter-war experience. Econometric evidence lends further support to the view that the proximate cause of the sterling crisis was the dramatic rise in unemployment caused by external deflationary forces.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP1898.asp
Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 1898.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Jun 1998
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1898

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 77 Bastwick Street, London EC1V 3PZ
Phone: 44 - 20 - 7183 8801
Fax: 44 - 20 - 7183 8820

Order Information:
Email:

Related research

Keywords: Currency Crisis; Gold Standard; Great Depression; Sterling; Unemployment;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. C Bean, 1992. "European Unemployment: A Survey," CEP Discussion Papers dp0071, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  2. Hatton, Timothy J., 1987. "A Quarterly Model of the Labour Market in Interwar Britain," CEPR Discussion Papers 186, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Miller, Marcus & Sutherland, Alan, 1994. "Speculative Anticipations of Sterling's Return to Gold: Was Keynes Wrong?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(425), pages 804-12, July.
  4. Snower,Dennis J. & Dehesa,Guillermo de la (ed.), 1997. "Unemployment Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521599214.
  5. Bernanke, Ben S & Carey, Kevin, 1996. "Nominal Wage Stickiness and Aggregate Supply in the Great Depression," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 111(3), pages 853-83, August.
  6. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1986. "Rational and Self-fulfilling Balance-of-Payments Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 72-81, March.
  7. Olivier Jeanne., 1997. "The Persistence of Unemployment Under a Fixed Exchange Rate Peg," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C97-093, University of California at Berkeley.
  8. Robert Flood & Nancy Marion, 1998. "Perspectives on the Recent Currency Crisis Literature," NBER Working Papers 6380, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1995. "Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission," Working Papers 95-15, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  10. Krugman, Paul, 1979. "A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 11(3), pages 311-25, August.
  11. Robert P. Flood & Peter M. Garber, 1980. "Gold Monetization and Gold Discipline," NBER Working Papers 0544, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Olivier Jeanne and Paul Masson., 1997. "Was the French Franc Crisis a Sunspot Equilibrium?," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C97-095, University of California at Berkeley.
  13. Dimsdale, Nicholas H & Horsewood, Nicholas, 1995. "Fiscal Policy and Employment in Interwar Britain: Some Evidence from a New Model," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 369-96, July.
  14. Alogoskoufis, George S & Smith, Ron, 1991. "The Phillips Curve, the Persistence of Inflation, and the Lucas Critique: Evidence from Exchange-Rate Regimes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1254-75, December.
  15. Paul Krugman, 1996. "Are Currency Crises Self-Fulfilling?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 345-407 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  16. Rudger Dornbusch & Ilan Goldfajn & Rodrigo O. Valdés, 1995. "Currency Crises and Collapses," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(2), pages 219-294.
  17. Broadberry, S N, 1983. "Unemployment in Interwar Britain: A Disequilibrium Approach," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 463-85, November.
  18. Jeanne, Olivier, 1997. "Are currency crises self-fulfilling?: A test," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3-4), pages 263-286, November.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Crafts, Nicholas; Fearon, Peter, 2010. "Lessons from the 1930s' Great Depression," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 23, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
  2. Eichengreen, Barry, 2003. "Three generations of crises, three generations of crisis models," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(7), pages 1089-1094, December.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1898

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.