EconTalk
Douglas Irwin on the Great Depression and the Gold Standard
This episode isn’t summarized yet
Create a free account and summarize it. In a few minutes you’ll have the key takeaways and a section-by-section summary.
Show notes
Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role the gold standard played in the Great Depression. Irwin argues that France systematically accumulated large amounts of gold in the late 1920s and 1930s, imposing massive deflation on the rest of the world. Drawing on a recent paper of his, Irwin argues that France's role in worldwide deflation was greater than that of the United States and played a significant role in the economic contraction that followed.