In this magisterial account of the Great Depression, MIT economist Charles Kindleberger emphasizes three factors that continue to shape global financial markets: panic, the power of contagion, and importance of hegemony. Reissued on its fortieth anniversary with a new foreword by Barry J. Eichengreen and J. Bradford DeLong, this masterpiece of economic history shows why U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, during the darkest hours of the 2008 global financial crisis, turned to Kindleberger and his peers for guidance.
The World in Depression, 1929–1939 40th Anniversary Edition
About the Book
Reviews
“The World in Depression is the best book on the subject, and the subject, in turn, is the economically decisive decade of the century so far.”—John Kenneth Galbraith"[Kindleberger] has written perhaps the finest analytical account of the run-up to the Great Depression and the ensuing run-down from it into mild recovery and eventual world war. [This] brilliant book remains a carefully documented admonition to our leading spirits to 'look to the ends' of what they are currently about."—Times Literary Supplement
"Charles Kindleberger's The World in Depression opened American eyes to the failures of interdependence behind the First Great Depression. DeLong and Eichengreen render great service by bringing this history to today's readers, with a preface that notes grim parallels and rephrases urgent questions for the Eurozone and for the wider world. You can't go wrong by reading Kindleberger—and better late than never."—James K. Galbraith, author of Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis.
Table of Contents
List of Text Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Recovery from the First World War
3. The Boom
4. The Agricultural Depression
5. The 1929 Stock-Market Crash
6. The Slide to the Abyss
7. 1931
8. More Deflation
9. The World Economic Conference
10. The Beginnings of Recovery
11. The Gold Bloc Yields
12. The 1937 Recession
13. Rearmament in a Disintegrating World Economy
14. An Explanation of the 1929 Depression
Bibliography
Index