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Scylla and Charybdis. Explaining Europe’s Exit from Gold, January 1928 – December 1936

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  • Nikolaus Wolf

Abstract

The paper examines the timing of exit from the interwar gold-exchange standard for a panel of European countries, based on monthly data over the period January 1928 - December 1936. I show that exit from gold can be understood in terms of a trade-off between a limited set of factors commonly suggested in the theoretical literature on currency crises. A simple and parsimonious econometric framework that nests various hypotheses allows me to predict the month of exit in the 1930s, except for France. I consider the separate cases of France and Poland to show my results shed light on country-specific debates.

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File URL: http://www.cesifo-group.de/portal/page/portal/DocBase_Content/WP/WP-CESifo_Working_Papers/wp-cesifo-2008/wp-cesifo-2008-04/cesifo1_wp2271.pdf
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 2271.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2271
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Keywords: gold-exchange standard; interwar period; Europe;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
  • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
  • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-

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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. Mitchener, Kris & Wandschneider, Kirsten, 2014. "Capital Controls and Recovery from the Financial Crisis of the 1930s," CEPR Discussion Papers 10019, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Kirsten Wandschneider & Nikolaus Wolf, 2009. "Shooting on a Moving Target: Eyplaining European Bank Rates during the Interwar Period," CESifo Working Paper Series 2694, CESifo Group Munich.
  4. Nikolaus Wolf, 2012. "Crises and Policy Responses within the Political Trilemma: Europe, 1929-1936 and 2008-2011," Working Papers 0016, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).

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