Astute visitors will have noticed that I’ve had Ben Bernanke’s Essays on the Great Depression on my Now Reading
list for over two months. I’ve been slowly working my way through this book, but with the new year fast approaching I think it’s time I gave up. This one not so much because the material isn’t interesting, but because I am not up to the material.
I picked up the book last year, before he was even appointed to be chairman of the Federal Reserve. Some economics writer listed the tome in a bibliography of a their own book. I can’t remember who specifically. I suspect it was N. Gregory Mankiw but I could be totally wrong and I don’t have that book handy to check.
This is not to say that I haven’t gotten anything from the book. I have. But this is not what I was expecting. I thought the book would be more essay-like. Instad, it is reprints of some of Bernanke’s academic papers. Very very heavy with graphs and tables and equations and jargon that is well beyond me.
The big thing I did get out of this is the correction of some misimpressions I had. I’d always thought that the Great Depression affected the United States primarily. Incorrect. The economic phenomenon occurred worldwide. I also thought that the public works projects initiated by Franklin Roosevelt hadn’t done much, but that our entry into World War II boosted us out of the economic slowdown. But according to Bernanke, the primary cause of the Depression was adherence to the gold standard by the U.S. and western European governments along with some poor policies by United States central bankers. As countries dropped off the gold standard between 1931 and 1936, they began recovering from the Depression. In other words, the key determinant of recovery was not World War II, but instead abandonment of the gold standard.
Title: Essays on the great depression
Author: Ben S. Bernanke
Imprint / publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: Paperback
Length: 310 p. (includes index)
Publication date: 2004
ISBN-10: 0-691-11820-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-11820-8
Subject: Depressions — 1929 — United States
Subject: Depressions — 1929
LC classification: HB3717 1929 .B365 2000
