TY  - JOUR
AU  - Eichengreen,Barry
AU  - Irwin,Douglas A.
TI  - The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression:  Who Succumbed and Why?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15142
PY  - 2009
Y2  - July 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15142
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15142.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

Douglas A. Irwin
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH  03755
Tel: 603/646-2942
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: douglas.irwin@dartmouth.edu
AB  - The Great Depression was marked by a severe outbreak of protectionist trade policies. But contrary to the presumption that all countries scrambled to raise trade barriers, there was substantial cross-country variation in the movement to protectionism. Specifically, countries that remained on the gold standard resorted to tariffs, import quotas, and exchange controls to a greater extent than countries that went off gold. Gold standard countries chose to maintain their fixed exchange rate and reduce spending on imports rather than allow their currency to depreciate. Trade protection in the 1930s was less an instance of special interest politics than second-best macroeconomic policy when monetary and fiscal policies were constrained.
ER  -