TY  - JOUR
AU  - Eichengreen,Barry
AU  - Temin,Peter
TI  - The Gold Standard and the Great Depression
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6060
PY  - 1997
Y2  - June 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6060
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6060.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Barry Eichengreen
Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
549 Evans Hall 3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/642-2772
Fax: 510/643-0926
E-Mail: eichengr@econ.Berkeley.edu

Peter Temin
Department of Economics
MIT, Room E52-271A
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-3126
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: ptemin@mit.edu
AB  - This paper, written primarily for historians, attempts to explain why political leaders and central bankers continued to adhere to the gold standard as the Great Depression intensified. We do not focus on the effects of the gold standard on the Depression, which we and others have documented elsewhere, but on the reasons why policy makers chose the policies they did.  We argue that the mentality of the gold standard was pervasive and compelling to the leaders of the interwar economy.  It was expressed and reinforced by the discourse among these leaders. It was opposed and finally defeated by mass politics, but only after the interaction of national policies had drawn the world into the Great Depression.
ER  -