Lessons from the Great Depression

Do events of the 1930s carry a message for the 1990s? Lessons from the GreatDepression provides an integrated view of the depression, covering the experience in Britain,France, Germany, and the United States. It describes the causes of the depression, why it was sowidespread and prolonged, and what brought about eventual recovery.Peter Temin also finds parallelsin recent history, in the relentless deflationary course followed by the U.S. Federal Reserve Boardand the British government in the early 1980s, and in the dogged adherence by the Reaganadministration to policies generated by a discredited economic theory - supply-side economics.PeterTemin is Professor of Economics at MIT.