IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehs/wpaper/18021.html

‘We can’t pay’: How Italy cancelled war debts after Lausanne

Author

Listed:
  • Marianna Astore

    (Bocconi University)

  • Michele Fratianni

    (Indiana University)

Abstract

"The paper deals with Italian inter-war debts, against the background of the very contentious international issue of war reparations that many Allied nations wanted to link to war debt repayments. While the bulk of the literature looks at the Lausanne conference of 1932 as an act of forgiveness of war debts, we show that Italy, having first achieved an extremely large haircut by restructuring US and UK debts in 1925-26, defaulted after Lausanne. We also present a new times series on Italian foreign debt from 1925 to 1934, a series that is consistent with the unfolding of relevant historical events."

Suggested Citation

  • Marianna Astore & Michele Fratianni, 2018. "‘We can’t pay’: How Italy cancelled war debts after Lausanne," Working Papers 18021, Economic History Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehs:wpaper:18021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/09f517cc-ff37-4418-87d6-c2f2ffe08317.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reinhart, Carmen & Trebesch, Christoph, 2014. "A Distant Mirror of Debt, Default, and Relief," CEPR Discussion Papers 10195, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    2. Keynes, John Maynard, 1919. "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number keynes1919.
    3. Eichengreen, Barry, 1996. "Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195101133.
    4. Fratianni, Michele & Giri, Federico, 2017. "The tale of two great crises," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 5-31.
    5. Michele Fratianni & John Pattison, 2001. "Review Essay: The Bank for International Settlements: An Assessment of its Role in International Monetary and Financial Policy Coordination," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 197-222, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raphaël Hekimian & David Le Bris, 2016. "US Crashes of 2008 and 1929 How did the French market react? An empirical study," Working Papers hal-04141589, HAL.
    2. Carmen M. Reinhart & Christoph Trebesch, 2016. "The International Monetary Fund: 70 Years of Reinvention," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 3-28, Winter.
    3. Pierre L. Siklos, 2022. "Did the great influenza of 1918–1920 trigger a reversal of the first era of globalization?," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 459-490, July.
    4. Barry Eichengreen & Peter Temin, 1997. "The Gold Standard and the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 6060, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. George S. Tavlas, 2016. "New Perspectives on the Great Depression: A Review Essay," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 353-374, December.
    6. David Laidler, 2003. "Meltzer's History of the Federal Reserve," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 1256-1271, December.
    7. Accominotti, Olivier & Chambers, David, 2014. "Out-of-sample evidence on the returns to currency trading," Economic History Working Papers 84582, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    8. Rui P. Esteves, 2011. "The Political Economy of Global Financial Liberalisation in Historical Perspective," Oxford University Economic and Social History Series _089, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    9. Rui Esteves, 2011. "The Political Economy of Global Financial Liberalisation in Historical Perspective," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _089, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    10. Raphael Hekimian & David Le Bris, 2016. "US Crashes of 2008 and 1929 How did the French market react? An empirical study," EconomiX Working Papers 2016-21, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    11. Jason Lennard, 2023. "Sticky wages and the Great Depression: evidence from the United Kingdom," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 27(2), pages 196-222.
    12. Giulio Federico, 2001. "IMF Conditionality," Economics Papers 2001-W19, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, revised 01 Sep 2001.
    13. Aiginger, Karl, 2010. "The Great Recession vs. the Great Depression: Stylized facts on siblings that were given different foster parents," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 4, pages 1-41.
    14. José Luis Cendejas & Félix-Fernando Muñoz & Nadia Fernández-de-Pinedo, 2017. "A contribution to the analysis of historical economic fluctuations (1870–2010): filtering, spurious cycles, and unobserved component modeling," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 11(1), pages 93-125, January.
    15. Ibrahim Ari & Muammer Koc, 2018. "Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development: Understanding the Interrelations between Public Investment and Sovereign Debt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-25, October.
    16. Accominotti, Olivier, 2012. "London Merchant Banks, the Central European Panic, and the Sterling Crisis of 1931," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-43, March.
    17. Gilles Carbonnier, 2018. "Humanitarian economics," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-54, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Ghosh, Atish R. & Ostry, Jonathan D. & Qureshi, Mahvash S., 2018. "Taming the Tide of Capital Flows: A Policy Guide," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262037165, December.
    19. Richard S.Grossman, 2016. "Banking Crises," Wesleyan Economics Working Papers 2016-001, Wesleyan University, Department of Economics.
    20. Jörg Bibow, 2018. "How Germany’s anti-Keynesianism has brought Europe to its knees," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(5), pages 569-588, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N94 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Europe: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ehs:wpaper:18021. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chair Public Engagement Committe (currently David Higgins - Newcastle) (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehsukea.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.