Two Great Trade Collapses: The Interwar Period & Great Recession Compared
In this paper, I offer some preliminary comparisons between the trade collapses of the Great Depression and Great Recession. The commodity composition of the two trade collapses was quite similar, but the latter collapse was much sharper due to the spread of manufacturing across the globe during the intervening period. The increasing importance of manufacturing also meant that the trade collapse was more geographically balanced in the later episode. Protectionism was much more severe during the 1930s than after 2008, and in the UK case at least helped to skew the direction of trade away from multilateralism and towards Empire. This had dangerous political consequences.
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Copy CitationKevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, "Two Great Trade Collapses: The Interwar Period & Great Recession Compared," NBER Working Paper 23825 (2017), https://doi.org/10.3386/w23825.Download Citation
Published Versions
Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke, 2018. "Two Great Trade Collapses: The Interwar Period and Great Recession Compared," IMF Economic Review, vol 66(3), pages 418-439.
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