This paper studies the role of unemployment in sterling's interwar 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 defense of the currency and show that it can reproduce the main features of sterling's interwar experience. Econometric evidence lends further support to the view that the proximate cause of the sterling crisis was the dramatic rise in unemployment brought about by external deflationary forces.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
6563.
Length: Date of creation: May 1998 Date of revision: Publication status: published relationship to a non-chapter. This should not happen. Please contact NBER. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6563
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