Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:03:49.395Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coping with catastrophes: economic policy, performance and institutions in troubled times, 1919–1955

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Theo Balderston
Theo Balderston
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 455 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The argument of Charles Kindleberger, P., The world in depression (London, Ist edn, 1974), esp. pp. 291Google Scholar ff.

2 The term applied to this phenomenon by Hawtrey, R. G., ‘French monetary policy’, in his The art of central banking (London, 1932), p. 38Google Scholar .

3 Temin, Peter, Lessons from the great depression. The Lionel Robbins lectures for 1989 (Cambridge, Mass., 1989)Google Scholar . Temin also specifies the conditions of recovery a bit differently, putting emphasis on the ‘socialist’ (i.e. activist) policy regimes of successful recoverers — including both Nazi Germany and ‘New Deal’ America.

4 Ibid. pp. 5–8, 15–16, 85–7.

5 His lukewarm attitude to Bretton Woods — Golden fetters, pp. 395ff – may indicate his view.

6 Abbott, C. C., The New York bond market 1920–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), pp. 178–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar , 196ff. The prices of German bonds issued abroad began to fall earlier – from autumn 1927 – than the prices of U.S. domestic bonds.

7 McNeil, William C., American money and the Weimar republic. Economics and politics on the eve of the great depression (New York, 1986), pp. 147–8Google Scholar .

8 Jackson, Julian, The politics of depression in France 1932–1936 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

9 Charles P. Kindleberger, ‘Collective memory vs. rational expectations: some historical puzzles in macro-economic behaviour’, reprinted in his Keynesianism vs. monetarism and other essays in financial history (London, 1985), pp. 129ff.

10 Mouré does not corroborate the argument found in Madden, John T. and Nadler, Marcus, The international money markets (New York, 1935), pp. 306–7Google Scholar , 312, that the volume of direct discounting by the Bank of France was sufficient to give it quasi monopsony powers over the market discount rate.

11 Mouré, , Franc Poincaré, p. 133Google Scholar.

12 Banking and monetary statistics of the U.S.A., issued by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Washington, D.C., 1943), pp. 450Google Scholar f., 657ff. Forward rates against sterling had to do duty for those against the dollar: Einzig, Paul, The theory of forward exchange (London, 1st edn, 1937) PP. 457Google Scholar ff.

13 Balderston, T., ‘Links between inflation and depression’, in Feldman, Gerald D. (ed.), Die Nachwirkungen der Inflation auf die deutsche Geschichte (Munich, 1985), pp. 157–86Google Scholar .

14 Mouré, , Franc Poincaré, p. 167Google Scholar .

15 Ibid. p. 169.

16 Since the Bank of France could not conduct open-market purchases, it may have been incapable of stemming theld influx of 1930–1. The clearest account of this is still Hawtrey, R. G., ‘French monetary policy’, pp. 28–32Google Scholar. See too B. Eichengreen, ‘The gold-exchange standard and the Great Depression’, reprinted in his Elusive stability.

17 C. P. Kindleberger, ‘The international monetary politics of a near-great power: two French episodes, 1926–1936 and 1960–1970’, reprinted in his Keynesianism vs. monetarism, pp. 119ff.

18 Barry Eichengreen and Charles Wyplosz, ‘The economic consequences of the franc Poincare’, reprinted in Barry Eichengreen, Elusive stability. Essays in the history of international finance 1919–1939 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 153ff.

19 Cp. Caron, François, An economic history of modem France (London, 1979), pp. 260–5Google Scholar.

20 Mouré, , Franc Poincaré, p. 168Google Scholar.

21 Jackson, , Politics of depression, pp. 75–9Google Scholar.

22 This is a translation of his Wachstum, Krisen, Handlungsspielraeume der Wirtschaftspolitik, Studien der Wirtschqftsgeschichte des 19 u. 20 Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1982)Google Scholar.

23 The relevant articles are ‘Constraints and room for manoeuvre in the great depression of the early thirties: towards a revision of the received historical picture’ (1978), ‘Economic causes of the collapse of the Weimar Republic’ (1980), and ‘Germany's exchange-rate options during the great depression’ (1980), all reprinted in Perspectives.

24 See too, however, the collection edited by Kershaw, Ian, Why did Weimar democracy fail? (London, 1990)Google Scholar. In particular this contains articles by C.-L. Holtfrerich and Harold James, who have been central participants in the controversy.

25 For these arguments see both his ‘Constraints…’ (note 23) and his ‘A decade of debate about Bruening's economic policy’, in von Kruedener (ed.), Economic crisis.

26 In his ‘A decade of debate…’, p. 137, Borchardt denies that his original ‘Constraints…’ made wages ‘the villain of the piece’, but both logic and the tenor of his further comments cast them in that role. He further denies that wage cuts in the later 1920s constituted his preferred counterfactual; but concedes that a slower rate of wage increase would have been better.

27 Ritschl, Albrecht, ‘Zu hoehe Loehne in der Weimarer Republik? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Holtfrerichs Berechnungen zur Lohnposition der Arbeiterschaft 1925–1932’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, XVI (1990), 375–402Google Scholar . Von Kruedener has also argued that Holtfrerich neglects the increased employment-related social insurance charges on employers: von Kruedener, J., ‘Die Ueberfoerderung der Weimarer Republik als Sozialstaat’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, XI (1985), 358Google Scholar ff., and Holtfrerich in von Kruedener, , Economic crisis, pp. 74Google Scholar ff.

28 My own (independent) calculations, which differ from Ritschl's largely in selection of base year and weighting, tended (to my surprise) to support Holtfrerich: Balderston, T., The origins and course of the German economic crisis. November 1923 to May 1932 (Berlin, 1992), pp. 49–60Google Scholar and 436–43.

29 Werner Abelshauser and Dietmar Petzina, ‘Krise und Rekonstruktion. Zur Interpretation der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung im 20 Jahrhundert’, reprinted in idem (eds), Deutsche Wirtschqftsgeschichte im Industriezeitalter (Koenigstein/Ts., 1981), pp. 47–93.

30 Von Kruedener, p. 75. Holtfrerich's hypothetical remedy, a kind of ‘save-as-you-eam scheme’ for workers, corroborates that this is his view. See his ‘Zu hoehe Loehne in der Weimarer Republik? Bemerkungen zur Borchardt-These’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, X (1984), 140–1Google Scholar.

31 The failure of entrepreneurship is also central to the argument of James's, Harold pro-Borchardtian study, The German slump. Politics and economics 1924–1936 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 130–61Google Scholar.

32 In von Kruedener, , Economic crisis, pp. 63Google Scholar f.

33 Gp. Knu t Borchardt, ‘Da s Gewicht der Inflationsangst in den wirtschaftspolitischen Entscheidungsprozessen waehrend der Weltwirtschaftskrise’ and Gerhard Schulz ‘Inflations-trauma, Finanzpolitik un d Krisenbekaempfung in den Jahren der Wirtschaftskrise 1930–1933’, both in Feldman, Gerald D., Die Machwirkungen…, pp. 233–60Google Scholar and 261–95.

34 After its three authors, Wladimir Woytinski, at that time a trade-union statistician, Fritz Tarnow, leader of the Woodworkers Union, and Fritz Baade, a socialist academic economist.

35 K. Borchardt argued that devaluation was not an option, in ‘Germany's exchange rate options during the great depression’, reprinted in his Perspectives, pp. 184ff.

36 The fertile mind of Hans Schaeffer is particularly hard to pin down. See James, Harold, ‘Economic reasons for the collapse of Weimar’, in Kershaw, Ian (ed.), Weimar, pp. 43–4Google Scholar.

37 Schoetz, Knut Borchardt und Hans-Otto (eds), Wirtschqftspolitik in der Krise. Die (Gehtim-) Konferenz der F. List Gesellschaft im September 1931 ueber Moeglichkeiten und Folgen einer Kreditausweitung (Baden-Baden), 1990Google Scholar. See also the recent monograph by Meister, Rainer, Die grosse Depression. Zwangslagen und Handlungsspielraeume der Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik in Deutschland 1929–1932 (Regensburg, 1991)Google Scholar.

38 Blaich, Fritz, Die Wirtschqftskrise 1925/6 und die Reichsregierung. Von der Erwerbslosenfuersorge zur Konjunkturpolitik (Kallmunz, 1977)Google Scholar.

39 In the view of Dieter, Hertz-Eichenrode, Wirtschaftskrise und Arbeitsbeschaffung. Konjunkturpolitik 1925/6 und die Grundlagen der Krisenpolitik Bruenings (Frankfurt/Main, 1982)Google Scholar, this episode turned Bruening firmly against deficitary finance.

40 In these views one can discern the (amply acknowledged) influence of Werner Abelshauser: cp. his Wirtschaft in Westdeutschland. Rekonstruktion und Wachstumsbedingungen in der amerikanischen und britischen Zone (Stuttgart, 1975)Google Scholar.

41 For this reason the most satisfactory textbook of Weimar remains that by the , G.D.R. historian Manfred Nussbaum, Wirtschaft und Stoat in Deutschland waehrend der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1978)Google Scholar.

42 In recent work the labour market has been analysed more systematically: Baehr, Johannes, Staatliche Schlichtung in der Weimarer Republik. Tarifpolitik, Korporatismus und Industrielle Konflikte Ztvischen Inflation und Deflation (Berlin, 1989)Google Scholar. Corbett, David, ‘Unemployment in Interwar Germany, 1924–1938’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1991)Google Scholar. Balderston, T., Origins and course, pp. 8–43Google Scholar.

43 Other papers in this volume are reviewed at appropriate places in this article. They were mainly composed as long ago as 1983 for the Final Conference of the Volkswagen Project on ‘Interdependence of political and economic developments in the domestic and foreign policies of the Versailles system of states 1919–39.’

44 An excellent recent example of this approach is Schubert, Aurel, The Credit-Anstalt crisis of 1931 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar.

45 The collection comprises papers given at the Tenth International Economic History conference in 1990 in Leuven.

46 See Forsyth in James, et al. (eds), Role, pp. 197–8Google Scholar; also Montenegro, Angelo, ‘Die Entwicklung eines multinationalen Unternhemens in den zwanziger Jahren: Die Società Italiana Pirelli’, in Schroeter, and Wurm, (eds), Politik, p. 165Google Scholar.

47 Cp. A. Teichova, ‘Investment behaviour’, in James, et al. , Role, p. 136Google Scholar.

48 Cp. Balderston, T., ‘German banking between the wars’, Business History Review, LXV (1991), 581–5Google Scholar.