Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxii

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2. Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective: An Overview

   • Barry Eichengreen, T. J. Hatton

   Pages 1-59

3. The Macroeconomics of the Interwar Years: International Comparisons

   • Andrew Newell, J. S. V. Symons

   Pages 61-96

4. Labour Market Structure and the Nature of Unemployment in Interwar Britain

   • Mark Thomas

   Pages 97-148

5. Unemployment, Insurance and Health in Interwar Britain

   • Bernard Harris

   Pages 149-183

6. National Socialist Economics: The Wirtschaftswunder Reconsidered

   • Dan P. Silverman

   Pages 185-220

7. Unemployment in the 1930s: The Case of Italy

   • Gianni Toniolo, Francesco Piva

   Pages 221-245

8. Why was Unemployment so Low in France During the 1930s?

   • Robert Salais

   Pages 247-288

9. Interwar Unemployment in Belgium

   • Martine Goossens, Stefaan Peeters, Guido Pepermans

   Pages 289-324

10. Interwar Unemployment in the United States: Evidence from the 1940 Census Sample

    • Robert Margo

    Pages 325-352

11. Unemployment and Relief in Canada

    • Alan Green, Mary MacKinnon

    Pages 353-396

12. The Australian and US Labour Markets in the 1930s

    • R. G. Gregory, V. Ho, L. McDermott, J. Hagan

    Pages 397-430

13. Back Matter

    Pages 431-434

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High unemployment has been one of the most disturbing features of the economy of the 1980s. For a precedent, one must look to the interwar period and in particular to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It follows that recent years have been marked by a resurgence of interest amongst academics in interwar unemployment. The debate has been contentious. There is nothing like the analysis of a period which recorded rates of un­ employment approaching 25 per cent to highlight the differences between competing schools of thought on the operation of labour markets. Along with historians, economists whose objective is to better understand the causes, character and consequences of contemporary unemployment and sociologists seeking to understand contemporary society's perceptions and responses to joblessness have devoted increasing attention to this his­ torical episode. Like many issues in economic history, this one can be approached in a variety of ways using different theoretical approaches, tools of analysis and levels of disaggregation. Much of the recent literature on the func­ tioning of labour markets in the Depression has been macroeconomic in nature and has been limited to individual countries. Debates from the period itself have been revived and new questions stimulated by modem research have been opened. Many such studies have been narrowly fo­ cused and have failed to take into account the array of historical evidence collected and anal~sed by contemporaries or reconstructed and re- inter­ preted by historians.

• Economic Development
• Employment
• Employment Relations
• Italy
• development
• labor market
• unemployment

• University of California, Berkeley, USA

  Barry Eichengreen

• CEPR, USA

  Barry Eichengreen

• University of Essex, UK

  T. J. Hatton

• CEPR, UK

  T. J. Hatton

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