IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/1898.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Currency Crisis and Unemployment: Sterling in 1931

Author

Listed:
  • 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Eichengreen, Barry & Jeanne, Olivier, 1998. "Currency Crisis and Unemployment: Sterling in 1931," CEPR Discussion Papers 1898, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1898
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1898
    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 below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bean, Charles R, 1994. "European Unemployment: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 32(2), pages 573-619, June.
    2. Jeanne, Olivier & Masson, Paul, 2000. "Currency crises, sunspots and Markov-switching regimes," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 327-350, April.
    3. Hatton, T J, 1988. "A Quarterly Model of the Labour Market in Interwar Britain," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 50(1), pages 1-25, February.
    4. 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 804-812, July.
    5. Eichengreen, Barry, 1996. "Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195101133.
    6. Anonymous, 1976. "Introduction [The 1977 Bank Act]," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 2(3), pages 368-369, Summer.
    7. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1986. "Rational and Self-fulfilling Balance-of-Payments Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 72-81, March.
    8. 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.
    9. Flood, Robert & Marion, Nancy, 1999. "Perspectives on the Recent Currency Crisis Literature," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 4(1), pages 1-26, January.
    10. Ben S. Bernanke & Kevin Carey, 1996. "Nominal Wage Stickiness and Aggregate Supply in the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 5439, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. anonymous, 1976. "International banking," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Spr, pages 3-4.
    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. Caves, Richard E. & North, Douglass C. & Price, Jacob M., 1980. "Exports and economic growth," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 1-5, January.
    14. Dimsdale, N H & Nickell, Stephen J & Horsewood, N, 1989. "Real Wages and Unemployment in Britain during the 1930s," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(396), pages 271-292, June.
    15. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1995. "Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 27-48, Fall.
    16. Krugman, Paul, 1979. "A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 11(3), pages 311-325, August.
    17. Flood, Robert P & Garber, Peter M, 1984. "Gold Monetization and Gold Discipline," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(1), pages 90-107, February.
    18. Crafts, N F R, 1989. "Long-term Unemployment and the Wage Equation in Britain, 1925-1939," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 56(222), pages 247-254, May.
    19. Benjamin, Daniel K & Kochin, Levis A, 1979. "Searching for an Explanation of Unemployment in Interwar Britain," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(3), pages 441-478, June.
    20. 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 369-396, July.
    21. Ben S. Bernanke & Kevin Carey, 1996. "Nominal Wage Stickiness and Aggregate Supply in the Great Depression," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 111(3), pages 853-883.
    22. 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 1254-1275, December.
    23. Velasco, Andres, 1996. "Fixed exchange rates: Credibility, flexibility and multiplicity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 1023-1035, April.
    24. 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.
    25. repec:mes:postke:v:18:y:1995:i:2:p:251-268 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. 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.
    27. Broadberry, S N, 1983. "Unemployment in Interwar Britain: A Disequilibrium Approach," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 463-485, November.
    28. 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


    Cited by:

    1. Remi Bazillier & Boris Najman, 2017. "Labour and Financial Crises: Is Labour Paying the Price of the Crisis?," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(1), pages 55-76, March.
    2. Nicholas Crafts & Peter Fearon, 2010. "Lessons from the 1930s Great Depression," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(3), pages 285-317, Autumn.
    3. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

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

    JEL classification:

    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • F4 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance
    • N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1898. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

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

    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 CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service 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.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.