From Great Depression to Great Credit Crisis: Similarities, Differences and Lessons

This paper was presented at the 50th Economic Policy Panel Meeting, held in Tilburg on October 23-24, 2009. The authors thank the University of Tilburg for their generosity in hosting the meeting. This paper is produced as part of the project 'Historical Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment: Origins and Persistence of the Great Divergence (HI-POD),' a Collaborative Project funded by the European Commission's Seventh Research Framework Programme, Contract number 225342. Financial assistance was also received from the Coleman Fung Risk Management Center at the University of California, Berkeley. This paper could not have been written without the generosity of many colleagues who have shared their data with us. We are extremely grateful to Richard Baldwin, Giovanni Federico, Vahagn Galstyan, Mariko Hatase, Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, William Hynes, Doug Irwin, Lars Jonung, Philip Lane, Sibylle Lehmann, Ilian Mihov, Emory Oakes, Albrecht Ritschl, Lennart Schön, Pierre Sicsic, Wim Suyker, Alan Taylor, Bryan Taylor, Gianni Toniolo, Irina Tytell, the staff at the National Library of Ireland, two anonymous referees, and the editor, Philippe Martin. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.