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Weimar Economic Decline, Nazi Economic Recovery, and the Stabilization of Political Dictatorship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Arthur van Riel
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, Free University Amsterdam, P.O. Box 7161, 1007 MC Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Arthur Schram
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Econometrics, CREED, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Abstract

A politicoeconomic model of the relationship between economic and structural variables and government popularity is developed and applied to the Weimar Republic. We obtained data from decentralized election results in the 1924 to 1933 period, using a weighted panel estimation method. Parameter estimates show a strong relationship between the development of economic variables and the decline in electoral support that confronted every government in this period. We link this finding to existing historiographie theories and extrapolate from it to estimate the effects of the economic recovery in the first years of the Nazi regime.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

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