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What Is a Good Thesis Statement About Depression?
Do you need to compose an informative or an argumentative essay on depression? One of the vital parts of your paper is a thesis statement on depression. Note there are various types of thesis statements, and what you use depends on the type of essay you are writing. A thesis summarizes the concept that you write on your research paper or the bottom line that you will write in your essay. It should elaborate more on the depression topics for the research paper you are working on. But at times, you might have a hard time writing your thesis statement.
Good Thesis Statement about Teenage Depression
Bipolar disorder thesis statements about depression, interesting thesis statements about depression, interesting thesis statement about diagnosis and treatment of depression, thesis statement about stress and depression, free thesis statements about depression and anxiety, get help with your depression research paper.
Here is a list of thesis statements to have an easier time writing your essay. They cover different topics, making it easy to select what excites you. Here we go!
Are you writing about teenagers and how they are always overthinking about their future, and they end up getting depressed? You need to write a good thesis statement for a depression research paper. That will help your depression argumentative essay stand out. Here are some thesis statement for depression to check out.
- There is a link between depression and alcohol among teenagers and the various ways to control it.
- Teenagers dealing with mood disorders eat and sleep more than usual, getting less interested in regular activities.
- Mediation is an effective way to reach out to adolescents that show heightened symptoms of depression.
- Self-blaming attributions are social cognitive mechanisms among adolescents.
- Peer victimization causes high-stress levels among adolescents and has negative psychological consequences.
Choosing a good depression thesis statement on bipolar disorder can be hectic. Research on bipolar will require a good thesis statement for mental health. Choose a thesis statement about mental health awareness here.
- People with Bipolar depression have more difficulties getting quality sleep.
- Bipolar disorder influences every aspect of a person’s life and changes their quality of life.
- Bipolar disorder causes depressive moods or lows of mental disorder.
- Bipolar is a severe mental issue that can negatively impact your moods, self-esteem, and behavior.
- Psychological evaluations play a significant role in diagnosing bipolar disorder.
When writing your essay, ensure that the thesis statement for mental health is fascinating. You will impress your professors if you get the right depression research paper outline as your thesis statement. Here is a depression thesis statement you can use.
- The effects of human psychology are viewed in the form of depression.
- Clinical psychology can help to bring outpatients who have depression.
- Treating long-term depression in bipolar patients is possible.
- Bipolar patients are drained to the roots of depression.
- Well-established rehabilitation centers can help bring drug addicts from depression.
Are you thinking of writing a thesis on depression and how to treat it? If so, you need to have an excellent thesis statement about mental health that will impress your professor. Read this list to find a thesis you need for your research paper.
- There are different ways to diagnose and treat depression from its early stage.
- People who show signs of depression from an early stage and seek treatment are likely to recover instead of those who do not show early signs.
- After you receive treatment for depression, putting the right measure in place is one of the best and effective ways to ensure that you do not get it again for the second time.
- Anxiety can interfere with daily living, and it can get anyone from children to adults.
- Besides medication, you need a lifestyle change and acceptance to treat depression.
Is your research about stress and how it can impact mental health? Getting a thesis statement for depression research paper that impresses your examiners can be challenging. Choose a thesis statement for your mental illness research paper below.
- Although it is normal for various situations to cause stress, having constant stress can have detrimental effects.
- To survive the modern industrial society, you need to have stress management strategies.
- The challenges of understanding and adapting to the changing environment can lead to stress.
- Lack of proper stress management will lead to inefficiency in everything people do.
- Stress does not come unless there are underlying stressors in your life.
Our team of writers is well-conversant about a free thesis statement about anxiety you can use. The best anxiety thesis statement will help you get the best grades. Here is a list of statements that stands out:
- Many factors can lead to early anxiety, but the leading cause of anxiety in adolescents is directly linked to families.
- Anxiety is a severe mental disorder that can occur without any apparent triggers.
- Long-term depression and anxiety can impact your mental health, but you can recover if you seek treatment.
- Depression and anxiety are not interlinked, and it is essential to learn how to differentiate them on practical grounds.
- Society has a role to play in helping people come out of depression and anxiety.
How do you write a research paper about depression and how it affects mental health? Before choosing a thesis statement on mental health, have a clear understanding of the essay that you are writing. That will help you get the best thesis to make our essay stand out.
But don’t keep stressing out about your thesis statement for mental illness research paper. We have your work cut out because our skilled writers have compiled a list of thesis statements about mental health and depression topics for research paper writing. We will also suggest correct thesis statements for your essay homework or assignment.
If you are still unsure of the statement to use, get in touch with us today. We have a team of skilled and experienced writers that can help you with your essay or research project and ensure that you get the best grades.
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The Great Depression - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s, profoundly affecting many countries. Essays on the Great Depression could explore its causes, such as the stock market crash of 1929, its impact on people’s lives, and the political and social repercussions. Moreover, discussions might extend to the measures taken to alleviate the depression and the lessons learned in economic policy and financial regulation, comparing it to other economic downturns. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about The Great Depression you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.
Why was Herbert Hoover Blamed for the Great Depression?
President Herbert Hoover is often blamed for the great depression for many reasons, he had ideas put into place that were meant to aid the problems in the economy but hurt it instead. Pro-labour policies made by President Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 caused the majority of the nation's gross domestic product to decline over the next two years. This made what could have been a bad recession turn into the Great Depression. There were many reasons […]
How the Great Depression Affected African Americans
In the 1920s, African Americans were looked upon as lower class individuals and as a result, had very low paying jobs. Now, just imagine an economic crisis in such a situation. It will be chaotic. Unfortunately, an economic crisis did hit, and many African Americans lost their jobs, to leave the jobs for the white Americans. This economic crisis, plus the racial inequality African Americans faced caused a great depression amongst African Americans, which affected them till 1960. During this […]
Great Depression Vs. Great Recession
Both the Great Depression and the Great Recession were major events that have occurred in the United States economy that have had lasting effects on the country and other countries around the world. But these events were necessarily good ones. They were two of the greatest crises in American economic history. The Great Depression was first, occurring from 1929 to1939. The Great Recession happened many decades in the future, starting in late 2007 and ending in early 2010. Comparison of […]
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What was the Great Depression?
The Great Depression was a dramatic shift in the US economy leaving people homeless and people didn't have a way to make a living. .This made the government create new programs called the New Deal it however failed to stop the Great Depression and these programs wasted a lot of money..The Great Depression started in 1929 it was the biggest economic downfall in US History it left a lot people without jobs and banks started going out of business all […]
Causes of the Great Depression (1929-1939)
During the Great Depression, Franklin D.Roosevelt stated, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." As World War I ended and the 1920's boom in the industry deteriorated, the Great Depression developed and the result was dreadful. The crash affected millions of people and lasted for about a decade. United States was in a state of despair, as banking systems failed, many people were unemployed, and prices drastically fell. War-producing factories shut down, farms/homes were lost to possession […]
Hitler’s Rise to Power in History
After Germany’s defeat in World War 1, the powerful countries of, the United States, Great Britain, France and other allies created the Treaty of Versailles, which forced hard terms on Germany. Being under the risk of invasion, Germany had no choice but to sign the treaty, taking full responsibility for the war and accepting the terms which included, large reparations, limited military, and giving up territory to neighboring countries. Restrictions would lead Germany into an economic crisis that would only […]
Effects of the Great Depression on Life of Americans
The Great Depression is a major event in American history impacted the lives of many Americans and others around the World. Following World War I, the Great Depression brought pain, confusion, and suffering to a countless amount of Americans lives. Any hope Americans had at the time was lost because of this tragic event. Unfortunately, all workers at this time no longer could feel comfortable with the economy around them. Essentially, the economy was ruined and created chaos across America. […]
What Ended the Great Depression?
The Great Depression had a devastating impact on the nation, spreading across the countryside and bringing hardship to big cities and small towns. No social, racial, or economic class was excluded. At the depth of the depression, in 1933: 13 million people were unemployed, 50% percent of the banks had foreclosed, national income fell by 42% and one million people were homeless. There were multiple reasons the depression occurred. The series of factors that caused this event were the 1929 […]
The Aftermath and Effects of World War II on the United States
Despite the overall ending of World War II, the effects of the war brought both positive and negative changes to the United States. These changes included different economic, political, and social aspects that transformed America into all that it is today, and whether or not these changes where positive or negative, both are truly important to the history of the United States of America. According to the textbook, some of the positive changes that World War II brought to the […]
Government Response to the Great Depression
Black Tuesday was the start of the depression. Also, Herbert Hoover did not want to give the people federal money. He thought they had to get themselves out of the problem. This made many people go homeless and plus the Dust Bowl which also destroyed people's homes. The Great Depression was defined as a dark age in the 1930's. Although, there are causes that made the Great Depression happen, like the farm industry failing, low income families, and lastly World […]
What was the Great Depression and why did it Start in the USA
There are many significant events that have shaped America’s history. Some were infamous, some scandalous and some we choose to overlook..According to the PBS film “The Great Depression”, The Great Depression was one of the most traumatic and gut wrenching event throughout history. This film outline the events leading up to the great depression and highlights some of the significant events during this time period. The Great Depression was an economic downturn that began in 1929 while president Herbert Hoover […]
Great Depression: what Happened, Causes, how it Ended
During the 1930s. America went through one of the worst economic declines in world history, The Great Depression. Many believe it was sole because of the stock market crash, however other factors played a huge role in causing the Great Depression to occur. Bank failures, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in the 1930s, and weather conditions from the Dust Bowl all played a critical factor in influencing this economic depression within America. Throughout America's history, much examination has been placed in the […]
The Great Depression and John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck is one of Americans best selling author. Steinbeck has wrote over 25 books throughout his writing career. Steinbeck traveled around the world to get ideas for his books. He mainly wrote about what it was like to live in the Great Depression and about American life in the 20’s. He wrote about his personal life and the life around him during the Dust Bowl and one of the worst times in American history. The Great Depression started right […]
Unemployment during the Great Depression
The stock market crash all started on black tuesday on october 24, 1929. During Black Tuesday 16,410,030 shares on the New York stock were traded in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. Tons of machines controlling the trades were shut down due to the tremendous amounts of share trades. Due to Black Tuesday, America as well as the industrial world to spiral down into what is known as the Great Depression. After this […]
Male Workers during the Great Depression
When the crisis broke out in 1929 the men's labor movement does not have solid organizations that allow it to react quickly to the effects of the financial crack and pay the consequences. It will be from 1933 that the lethargy of the male working class breaks down and a stage of great strikes and struggles begins. This resuscitation coincides, in part, with the sanction of the National Recovery Act. It contained a clause that recognized male workers' right to […]
Economic Recovery in the Great Depression
The Nineteen Twenties proved to be a great decade for America. The end of the Great War marked the end of many world powers and weakened many other countries. However, amidst of this chaos, the stage was set for America to become a superpower and prosper greatly throughout the decade"just to break down and enter a longest-lasting economic downturn the country has ever seen. This would affect the lives of a lot of people as unemployment, suicide rates and death […]
Great Depression: Causes and Definition
The Great Depression was the worst economic problem in the history of the world, from 1929 to 1939. It caused many problem and difficulty like, Overproduction, Big crash, weak banking systems, and buying on margins. The Great Depression made everyone forget about the wealth, growth and prosperity of last period of ten years and face new economically unfair conditions of business and living in a bad situation. The government should’ve involve more in the Great Depression to help people and […]
Causes of the Great Depression and the Lasting Impacts
Abstract This paper discusses the causes of the Great Depression and the lasting impacts it had on the U.S. Many people attribute the sole cause of the Great of Depression to the stock market crash of 1929 but there are actually multiple contributing factor. The stock market crash propelled the Great Depression forward but many other causes contributed to the length and depth. Keywords: Great Depression, Stock Market The 1920's were a time of low unemployment, mass production of goods, […]
Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery
The Great Depression hit America like a whirlwind during the 1930'. It hit with a force like no other. Its' impact was nothing short of devastating in all aspects of American life. This was a time of extreme poverty, unemployment, homelessness and overall social unrest. Every American in every town and city was greatly impacted by the crash of the stock market which in turn led to a complete nose dive of the economy. This prompted an increased number of […]
The History of the Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression starting in 1929 ending in 1941. The Great Depression started with numerous types of things. The economic conditions that led to the Great Depression began in the early 1920s, this was said by, Jennifer Croft in her article called, "Facts About The Great Depression." It started by the crash of stock markets, drought (The Dust Bowl), overproduction of goods, bank failures, Stock speculation, and consumer debt. After this lasting for about […]
Effects the Great Depression on African Americans
From the economic crisis in the 1930s to now, our country has developed greatly in medicine, technology, art, military weapons, and laws. However, since then prejudices are still apparent and people’s mindsets have stayed relatively the same from those of 100 years ago and are not open-minded like the development of medicine and weapons. The Great Depression impacted African Americans immensely in comparison to the white working class and farmers. Middle and lower class women being paid less compared to […]
Great Depression in the United States
The Great depression was a time when America could not see the future and felt doubtful about the future to come. This was the worst economic downfall in the history of the United States. The Depression started in 1929 and happened to end in the end of 1930. More than a third of the nation's banks had failed and this caused the major stock market to come crashing down. The Great Depression was horrifying for many Americans because of its […]
Gender Roles during the Great Depression and the Cold War
A role or behavior learned by a person as appropriate to their gender which is determined by the prevailing cultural norms is called a gender role. Both men and women have been told how to behave, dress, and even present themselves to the public. An example of gender roles in society is women are supposed to be feminine, graceful, polite, nurturing, emotional, take care of kids, cook, clean; while men are supposed to be muscular, aggressive, tall, take care of […]
How could the Great Depression been Pre Tive
The Great Depression started in 1929 and lasted through 1939, where over a short period of time drastic changes occurred not just to the United States but also other countries that were involved in the United Nations. Even though the economy suffered, unemployment increased and the stock market fell this could have been prevented looking back at it now. The start of the Depression was caused by the engagement of the government decision over the nation's economy and also the […]
Argentina and the Great Depression
From 1860 to 1930, Argentina was viewed as one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. Argentina had an enormous residential which shaped a ton of speculations and enabled the economy to be modernized with the advancement of nearby industries. During this time, Argentina's economy was firmly tied with the British economy in view of Argentina fares and imports of fine yields. A portion of their enterprises was; sustenance preparing, meat pressing, flour processing, and calfskin tanning everything that helped […]
The Economy of the Great Depression
The United States has faced quite a few depressions every 20 or so years. At the end of the 1920’s the United States had a thriving economy until the Great Depression hit in 1929. The Great Depression was the most severe and longest ever experienced by the industrialized western world. This depression occurred between 1929 and 1939 resulting from a time of major economic decline, bank failures, reduction in purchasing, and the drought conditions. Before the depression, profits for businesses […]
America’s Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal
The Great Depression led to one of the greatest economic downfalls in United States history and some of the economic causes that led to the Great Depression included bank failures, the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the Dust Bowl. A total of 56,670 banks failed from the years 1930-1932. The number of bank failures decreased as the years went on. Most of these banks were smaller side (Chapter 21). During this time, customers lost most if not all of […]
The Causes of the Great Depression
Imagine losing all your money in a blink of an eye after it being flowing into your pocket rapidly in the last period and then you either have to depend on others or sell what you have and stand in long lines for food. This is what happened to average families during the greatest economic downturn in the history of the U.S. Before the great depression the U.S was advancing exponentially during what was called the Roaring Twenties(Ellen Parson,2002). The […]
Herbert Hoover’s Presidency: Navigating through the Storm of the Great Depression
Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States, often finds himself eclipsed by the significant impact of the Great Depression. The current era of unparalleled economic upheaval has significantly influenced the course of history. Herbert Hoover, a professional engineer and successful entrepreneur, became the presidency in 1929 during the economic turmoil that plagued the United States. The scholarly community has engaged in extensive historical discourse over his reaction to the Great Depression. A comprehensive comprehension of Hoover's actions necessitates […]
How did the Great Depression Lead to WW2
Imagine a world gripped by economic despair, where hope seems like a distant dream and the common man struggles to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The 1920s, often glamorized as the age of jazz and prosperity, suddenly gave way to the harsh realities of the 1930s: The Great Depression. As families across the globe grappled with unemployment and hunger, a more sinister wave was taking shape in the form of political upheavals and rising dictatorships. But […]
Time period : | August 1929 – March 1933 |
Duration (months) : | 43 |
Global GDP decline : | -26.7% |
Peak global unemployment : | 24.9% (1933) |
Next instance : | Recession of 1937–1938 |
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How To Write an Essay About The Great Depression
Understanding the great depression.
Before starting an essay on the Great Depression, it is essential to have a comprehensive understanding of this significant historical event. The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic downturn that took place during the 1930s. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into panic and wiped out millions of investors. The depression had devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Begin your essay by outlining the key events that led to the Great Depression, including the stock market crash, bank failures, and reduction in purchasing across the board. Additionally, discuss the global impact of the depression, as it was not limited to the United States but affected economies worldwide.
Developing a Thesis Statement
A strong essay on the Great Depression should be centered around a clear, concise thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about the Great Depression. For instance, you might analyze the causes of the Great Depression, its impact on a particular sector of society, or the effectiveness of the responses by governments. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and ensure a structured and coherent analysis.
Gathering Historical Evidence
To support your thesis, gather historical evidence from credible sources. This may include economic data, personal accounts, government policies, and historical analyses. For example, if discussing the impact on agriculture, you might use statistics about farm foreclosures or personal narratives from farmers. Analyze this evidence critically, considering the context and the source's reliability.
Analyzing the Impact of The Great Depression
Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing the impact of the Great Depression. Discuss the widespread unemployment, the collapse of financial institutions, and the human toll it took on society. Consider the long-term effects, such as changes in government policy, shifts in economic theory, and how it shaped subsequent generations' attitudes toward money and banking.
Concluding the Essay
Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your discussion and restating your thesis in light of the evidence presented. Your conclusion should tie together your analysis and emphasize the significance of understanding the Great Depression in the context of both historical and modern economic understanding. You might also want to reflect on the lessons learned from the Great Depression and their relevance to contemporary economic challenges.
Reviewing and Refining Your Essay
After completing your essay, take the time to review and refine it. Ensure that your arguments are clearly articulated and supported by evidence. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers, teachers, or historians to further refine your essay. A well-written essay on the Great Depression will not only demonstrate your understanding of this pivotal period in history but also your ability to engage critically with economic and historical narratives.
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10 New Thesis Statement about Depression & Anxiety | How to Write One?
Did you know according to the National Institute of Mental Health; it is estimated that approximately 8.4% of adults are patients of major depression in the US? Well, depression is a common illness globally that affects a lot of people. Yet, the reasons for this psychological sickness vary from person to person and numerous studies are being conducted to discover more about depression.
Therefore, college and university students are currently assigned to write research papers, dissertations, essays, and a thesis about depression. However, writing essays on such topics aims to increase the awareness of physical and mental well-being among youth and help them find solutions.
However, a lot of students find it pretty challenging to write a thesis statement about depression and seek someone to write my essay . No worries! In this article, you will learn about what is a good thesis statement about mental health and some effective methods and approaches to write a killer headline and compose an astonishing essay about depression.
5 Thesis Statement About Depression:
- “The complexity of depression, which includes biological, psychological, and environmental components, emphasizes the need for individualized treatment plans that consider each person’s particular requirements.”
- “Depression in the workplace not only affects an individual’s productivity but also carries economic implications, emphasizing the importance of fostering a mental health-friendly work environment.”
- “Alternative, holistic approaches to mental health care have the potential to be more successful as the link between creative expressions, such as art therapy, and depression management becomes more commonly recognized.”
- “It is critical to enhance geriatric mental health treatment and reduce the stigma associated with mental illness in older people since depression in senior populations is typically underdiagnosed and mistreated.”
- “The link between early childhood adversity and the risk of developing depression later in life accentuates the importance of early intervention and support systems for children exposed to adverse experiences.”
5 Thesis Statements about Anxiety & Depression :
- “Depression and anxiety Co-occurring disorders are a major concern in mental health, necessitating integrated treatment options that meet the unique challenges that co-occurring diseases provide.”
- “The utilization of technology-driven therapies, such as smartphone apps and telehealth services, is a realistic approach of addressing persons suffering from anxiety and depression, while also increasing access to mental health care.”
- “The examination of the gut-brain connection and its potential role in anxiety and depression showcases a burgeoning area of research that could lead to novel treatments emphasizing nutrition and gut health.”
- “Adolescents who experience both anxiety and depression face a serious issue that calls for comprehensive school-based mental health programs and preventative measures to promote young people’s mental health.”
- “Exploring the impact of sociocultural factors and the role of community support systems in the experience of anxiety and depression provides insights into the development of culturally sensitive mental health interventions.”
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Follow 7 Proven Methods to Compose Thesis Statement about Depression
A thesis is the overview of the concepts and ideas that you will write in your research paper or in the essay. Yet, a thesis statement about anxiety focuses more on the stress and depression topics for the paper you’re working on, which can be written by following the tips given below.
Nonetheless, you can compose an outline by covering the points mentioned below:
1. Pick a good study topic and perform a basic reading. Look for some intriguing statistics and try to come up with creative ways to approach your subject. Examine a few articles for deficiencies in understanding.
2. Make a list of your references and jot down when you come across a noteworthy quotation. You can cite them in your paper as references. Organize all of the information you’ve acquired in one location.
3. In one phrase, state the purpose of your essay. Consider what you want to happen when other people read your article.
4. Examine your notes and construct a list of all the key things you wish to emphasize. Make use of brainstorming strategies and jot down any ideas that come to mind.
5. Review and revise the arguments and write a thesis statement for a research paper or essay about depression.
6. Organize your essay by organizing the list of points. Arrange the points in a logical sequence. Analyze all elements to ensure that they are all relevant to your goal.
7. Reread all of your statements and arrange your outline in a standard manner, such as a bulleted list.
Final Words
So, what is an ideal way to write a thesis statement about depression for your research paper or essay? We hope you have a thorough idea of the essay you’re writing before picking a thesis statement about mental well-being. That will assist you in developing the greatest thesis for our essay.
But don’t get too worked up over your thesis statement for a research paper on mental disorders. Our professional subject experts have produced a list of thesis statements about mental health and depression themes for research paper writing, so you’ve got your job cut out for you. For your essay assignments or assignments, we will also offer appropriate thesis statements.
If you’re still confused about which statement to use, contact us right away. We have a staff of highly qualified and seasoned writers who can assist you with your essay or research work and guarantee that you receive the highest possible score.
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Great Depression Research Paper Topics
In this comprehensive guide on Great Depression research paper topics , we delve into the fascinating world of one of the most significant economic crises in history. As students studying history and assigned to write a research paper, it is essential to explore a wide range of engaging and thought-provoking topics related to the Great Depression. This page offers a comprehensive list of Great Depression research paper topics, an article on the Great Depression and its impact, expert advice on topic selection, tips on writing an effective research paper, and information about iResearchNet’s writing services. By following this guide, you will gain valuable insights and resources to unleash your potential and excel in your Great Depression research papers.
100 Great Depression Research Paper Topics
The Great Depression was a period of immense economic turmoil that gripped the world in the 1930s. It left a profound impact on various aspects of society and shaped the course of history. As a student of history, delving into the depths of this significant era provides a multitude of research opportunities. In this section, we present a comprehensive list of Great Depression research paper topics, divided into ten categories. These topics encompass a wide range of subjects and perspectives, allowing you to explore different facets of this transformative period.
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Economic Causes and Effects:
- The Stock Market Crash of 1929: Causes, Consequences, and Lessons Learned
- Banking Failures and the Collapse of the Financial System during the Great Depression
- Unemployment and its Social and Economic Implications during the Great Depression
- The Role of Government Policies in Shaping the Economic Landscape of the Great Depression
- The Impact of International Trade and Protectionism on the Global Economy during the Great Depression
- Changes in Monetary and Fiscal Policy Approaches in Response to the Great Depression
- Economic Inequality and the Great Depression: Examining the Disparities
- The Role of Consumer Spending and Investment Patterns in Shaping the Great Depression
- Economic Recovery Efforts and the Effectiveness of New Deal Programs
- Comparative Analysis of the Great Depression with Other Economic Crises
Social Impact and Cultural Changes:
- Poverty and Homelessness in the Great Depression: Causes, Experiences, and Responses
- Gender Roles and Women’s Experiences during the Great Depression
- African Americans and the Great Depression: Struggles, Activism, and Cultural Expression
- Art and Literature as Responses to the Great Depression: Depictions of Hardships and Resilience
- Social Movements and Labor Unions during the Great Depression: Strikes, Protests, and Reforms
- The Role of Education and Intellectual Life during the Great Depression
- Migration and Mobility during the Great Depression: Impact on Communities and Culture
- The Influence of Music and Entertainment on Society during the Great Depression
- Changes in Family Dynamics and Relationships during the Great Depression
- Public Health and Social Welfare Systems during the Great Depression: Challenges and Reforms
Government Interventions and Policies:
- Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal: Analyzing its Objectives, Implementation, and Results
- Role of the Federal Reserve in the Great Depression: Monetary Policy and Regulation
- Social Security Act of 1935: Origins, Implementation, and Long-Term Impact
- Agricultural Adjustment Act and its Effects on the Farming Community
- The National Industrial Recovery Act: Assessing its Goals, Strategies, and Legacy
- The Works Progress Administration (WPA): Job Creation and Infrastructure Projects
- The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC): Environmental Conservation during the Great Depression
- The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): Regulating Financial Markets after the Crash
- The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA): Providing Relief to the Needy
- The Role of International Organizations and Agreements in Addressing the Global Effects of the Great Depression
Global Perspectives:
- The Global Spread and Impact of the Great Depression: Comparative Analysis
- The Great Depression in Europe: Causes, Effects, and Recovery Strategies
- The Great Depression and the Rise of Fascism: Examining the Interconnections
- Latin America’s Experience of the Great Depression: Economic Challenges and Political Shifts
- The Great Depression in Asia: Exploring Economic, Social, and Political Transformations
- The Role of International Financial Institutions in Mitigating the Global Effects of the Great Depression
- The Impact of Colonialism and Imperialism on Economic Vulnerability during the Great Depression
- The Great Depression and International Relations: Shifting Power Dynamics and Diplomatic Challenges
- Lessons Learned from the Great Depression: Policy Recommendations for Future Economic Crises
- Historical Comparisons: Assessing the Great Depression in Relation to Other Global Economic Downturns
Psychological and Social Welfare:
- Psychological Impact of the Great Depression on Individuals and Communities
- Mental Health Services and the Understanding of Mental Illness during the Great Depression
- The Role of Charity and Philanthropy in Assisting those Affected by the Great Depression
- Social Welfare Programs and Relief Efforts: Examining their Design and Effectiveness
- The Influence of Social Work and Social Workers during the Great Depression
- The Role of Religion and Faith-Based Organizations in Providing Support during the Great Depression
- The Impact of Childhood Experiences during the Great Depression: Long-Term Effects
- Social Assistance and Relief Programs: Comparing Strategies and Approaches
- Social Movements and Grassroots Activism for Social Justice during the Great Depression
- The Influence of Public Opinion and Mass Media on Social Welfare Policies
Impact on Specific Industries:
- The Automobile Industry during the Great Depression: Challenges, Innovations, and Recovery
- Impact of the Great Depression on the Banking and Financial Sector
- Film Industry during the Great Depression: Entertainment and Escapism in Troubled Times
- The Construction Industry during the Great Depression: Infrastructure Development and Public Works Projects
- The Impact of the Great Depression on the Textile and Manufacturing Industries
- Changes in the Agricultural Sector during the Great Depression: Farming Practices and Government Interventions
- Mining and Natural Resource Industries during the Great Depression: Challenges and Adaptations
- The Role of Labor Unions in Protecting Workers’ Rights during the Great Depression
- Impact of the Great Depression on the Shipping and Maritime Industry
- The Aviation Industry during the Great Depression: Technological Advances and Commercial Aviation Expansion
Political Climate and Leadership:
- Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Leadership during the Great Depression: Policies and Legacy
- Opposition and Criticisms of New Deal Programs: Political Debates and Alternative Proposals
- Role of Political Parties and Electoral Shifts during the Great Depression
- Populist Movements and Responses to Economic Hardships: The Influence of Radical Politics
- The Role of Women in Politics during the Great Depression: Activism and Reform Efforts
- The Impact of the Great Depression on the Presidency and the Executive Branch
- Socialism, Communism, and the Great Depression: Ideological Shifts and Debates
- The Role of the Supreme Court in Shaping New Deal Policies and their Constitutionality
- The Influence of International Relations and Geopolitics on National Responses to the Great Depression
- Political Movements and Grassroots Activism during the Great Depression: Lessons for Today
Cultural and Artistic Responses:
- Literature of the Great Depression: Themes, Styles, and Authors
- Visual Arts during the Great Depression: Depictions of Hardship and Social Commentary
- Music and the Great Depression: Exploring Jazz, Blues, and Folk Music Movements
- Theatre and Performance Arts during the Great Depression: Escapism and Social Critique
- Photography and Documentary Projects: Capturing the Realities of the Great Depression
- Radio and Broadcasting during the Great Depression: Entertainment and News Dissemination
- The Influence of Hollywood Films on Popular Culture during the Great Depression
- Dance and Dance Halls during the Great Depression: Cultural Expression and Social Gathering
- Sports and Athletics during the Great Depression: Resilience and National Identity
- Fashion and Popular Culture Trends during the Great Depression: Reflections of Social Change
Regional Perspectives:
- The Great Depression in the United States: Regional Variations and Local Impacts
- The Great Depression in Rural Communities: Challenges and Agricultural Adjustments
- Urban Areas during the Great Depression: Impact on Cities, Migration, and Community Dynamics
- The Great Depression in Europe: Regional Responses and Recovery Strategies
- The Great Depression in Asia: Regional Economic Shifts and Political Unrest
- Latin America’s Experience of the Great Depression: Economic Policies and Social Transformations
- The Great Depression in Africa: Colonial Economies and Indigenous Responses
- The Impact of the Great Depression on the Caribbean: Trade, Tourism, and Political Instability
- The Great Depression in the Middle East: Oil, Colonialism, and Economic Resilience
- The Great Depression in Oceania: Impacts on Indigenous Communities and Trade Relations
Lessons Learned and Legacy:
- Economic Policies and Regulations Implemented Post-Great Depression: Analysis and Evaluation
- The Great Depression’s Influence on Modern Economic Thought and Macroeconomic Theory
- The Great Depression and the Formation of International Financial Institutions
- Comparative Analysis of the Great Depression with Subsequent Economic Crises
- The Long-Term Social and Economic Consequences of the Great Depression
- Historical Reflections on the Lasting Impact of the Great Depression: Lessons for Today
- The Great Depression’s Influence on Government Intervention and Social Welfare Programs
- The Role of Economic Forecasting and Risk Management in Post-Great Depression Policies
- The Great Depression and Changes in Economic Theory and Policy Approaches
- Evaluating the Successes and Failures of Recovery Efforts during the Great Depression
This comprehensive list of Great Depression research paper topics offers a diverse array of subjects for exploration and analysis. Whether you are interested in the economic, social, cultural, political, or regional aspects of this era, there is a topic to suit your research interests. By selecting a topic from this list, you can delve into the complexities of the Great Depression, uncovering its causes, effects, and the lessons it holds for the present and future.
The Great Depression: Exploring its Impact and Historical Significance
The Great Depression stands as one of the most transformative periods in modern history, leaving an indelible mark on societies around the world. This 2000-word article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the Great Depression, its historical context, and its profound significance. By delving into the range of Great Depression research paper topics, we can gain valuable insights into the causes and effects of the economic collapse, its social impact, and the government responses that shaped the path to recovery. Through the study of the Great Depression, we can better understand the complexities of economic systems, social inequality, and the role of government intervention in times of crisis.
- The Historical Context : The article begins by setting the stage for the Great Depression, exploring the economic prosperity of the 1920s, the underlying factors that contributed to the collapse, and the global context in which it unfolded. It highlights the interconnectedness of economies and the far-reaching consequences of the financial downturn.
- The Causes of the Great Depression : This section delves into the causes of the Great Depression, examining factors such as the stock market crash of 1929, the unsustainable economic practices of the time, and the impact of international events. It explores the intricate web of circumstances that led to the onset of the devastating economic downturn.
- The Effects of the Great Depression : Here, we explore the wide-ranging effects of the Great Depression on individuals, families, businesses, and entire nations. We discuss the soaring unemployment rates, widespread poverty, loss of homes and farms, and the resulting social and psychological impact on affected communities. The section also highlights the global ramifications, including a decline in international trade, financial instability, and political shifts.
- Social Impact and Cultural Changes : The Great Depression had a profound impact on society, reshaping social norms, cultural attitudes, and the fabric of communities. This section explores the challenges faced by various social groups, such as women, minorities, and workers. It discusses the emergence of social movements, the role of art and literature as responses to the crisis, and the cultural shifts that took place during this period.
- Government Responses and Policies : The government responses to the Great Depression played a critical role in shaping the trajectory of recovery. This section examines the policies implemented by governments around the world, focusing on notable initiatives such as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States. It analyzes the effectiveness of these policies, their impact on the economy and society, and the enduring legacy of government intervention.
- Economic Systems and Lessons Learned : The Great Depression prompted a reevaluation of economic systems and theories. This section explores the debates surrounding capitalism, socialism, and the role of government regulation. It discusses the long-term implications of the Great Depression on economic thought, policy approaches, and the establishment of social safety nets.
- Social Inequality and Social Justice : Studying the Great Depression provides an opportunity to examine the deep-rooted issues of social inequality and the pursuit of social justice. This section explores the unequal distribution of wealth and resources during the period, the impact on marginalized communities, and the subsequent efforts to address systemic inequalities. It also examines the role of labor unions and their fight for worker rights during this tumultuous time.
- Government Intervention and the Role of Institutions : The Great Depression led to a significant expansion of government intervention and the establishment of new institutions. This section examines the role of institutions such as the Federal Reserve, the creation of social welfare programs, and the impact of regulatory bodies. It evaluates the lasting effects of these interventions on economic stability, social welfare, and the relationship between the government and the private sector.
- Global Impact and International Relations : The Great Depression had a profound effect on the global stage, reshaping international relations and sparking geopolitical shifts. This section explores how different countries were affected by the economic downturn and how it influenced their foreign policies. It also examines the efforts to address the global economic crisis through international cooperation and the establishment of institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
- Lessons Learned and Legacy : In this final section, we reflect on the lessons learned from the Great Depression and its enduring legacy. It discusses the reforms and regulations implemented to prevent a similar economic catastrophe in the future, the importance of financial regulation, and the significance of social safety nets. It also examines the long-term impact on economic policies, the role of the government in managing economic crises, and the relevance of studying the Great Depression in the modern world.
The Great Depression stands as a defining moment in history, with profound implications for economic, social, and political systems. By studying the causes, effects, social impact, and government responses of this period, we gain valuable insights into the complexities of economic systems, social inequality, and the role of government intervention. Exploring the range of Great Depression research paper topics allows us to deepen our understanding of this transformative era and its relevance to contemporary society.
How to Choose Great Depression Research Paper Topics
Selecting an engaging and meaningful research topic is crucial when delving into the realm of Great Depression studies. This section provides valuable guidance on how to choose the most suitable research paper topic that aligns with your interests, academic goals, and the significance of this historical period. By following these ten tips, you can navigate through the vast array of potential Great Depression research paper topics and identify a research question that allows for a comprehensive exploration of the Great Depression.
- Reflect on Personal Interests : Begin by considering your personal interests within the broader context of the Great Depression. Reflect on aspects such as social history, economic policies, cultural impact, or political responses. Exploring Great Depression research paper topics that resonate with your passion will ensure a deeper engagement and motivation throughout the research process.
- Conduct Preliminary Research : Engage in preliminary research to familiarize yourself with the existing scholarship on the Great Depression. This will help you identify gaps in the literature and uncover potential avenues for further investigation. Consult academic journals, books, and reputable online sources to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current scholarly discourse.
- Focus on Specific Regions or Time Periods : The Great Depression had a global impact, affecting different regions in unique ways. Consider narrowing your research focus to a specific country, region, or even a particular community. This allows for a more nuanced analysis and provides an opportunity to examine localized experiences and responses to the economic crisis.
- Analyze Primary and Secondary Sources : Utilize both primary and secondary sources to gather evidence and support your research. Primary sources, such as letters, diaries, government records, and newspapers from the period, offer firsthand accounts and insights. Secondary sources, including scholarly articles and books, provide critical analysis and interpretations of the Great Depression.
- Explore Different Aspects of the Great Depression : The Great Depression is a multi-faceted historical event that impacted various spheres of life. Consider exploring different aspects, such as the economic causes, social consequences, political responses, cultural expressions, or international relations. By delving into different dimensions, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the era.
- Examine the Impact on Different Social Groups : The Great Depression affected people from all walks of life differently. Explore the experiences of various social groups, such as women, racial and ethnic minorities, farmers, workers, and the urban poor. Investigate how these groups navigated through the economic crisis and the impact it had on their lives.
- Analyze Government Policies and Programs : Government responses played a significant role in addressing the Great Depression. Choose a research topic that focuses on specific government policies, programs, or initiatives implemented during this time. Analyze their effectiveness, impact on the economy and society, and the long-term consequences of these interventions.
- Investigate Cultural Responses and Artistic Expressions : The Great Depression fostered a wealth of cultural responses, including literature, music, photography, and visual arts. Explore the cultural expressions of the era and their reflection of the social and economic climate. Analyze the works of artists, writers, and musicians to understand how they captured the experiences and emotions of the time.
- Consider Comparative Analysis : Comparative analysis allows for a deeper understanding of the Great Depression by examining similarities and differences between different countries, regions, or time periods. Compare the economic, social, and political responses of multiple nations or explore the impact of the Great Depression on different continents.
- Engage with Historiographical Debates : The study of the Great Depression is dynamic, with ongoing debates and reinterpretations of historical events and their significance. Choose a research topic that engages with these historiographical debates and contributes to the scholarly discourse. By exploring conflicting interpretations, you can develop a nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding the Great Depression.
Choosing a research topic on the Great Depression requires careful consideration and a thoughtful approach. By reflecting on personal interests, conducting preliminary research, focusing on specific regions or time periods, analyzing primary and secondary sources, and exploring various aspects and social groups, you can identify a research question that aligns with your interests and academic goals. Engaging with government policies, cultural expressions, and comparative analysis provides further avenues for exploration. Remember to contribute to historiographical debates and approach your research with critical thinking and analytical skills. By following these ten tips, you will be well-equipped to embark on a successful research journey into the depths of the Great Depression.
How to Write a Great Depression Research Paper
Writing a research paper on the Great Depression requires careful planning, thorough research, and effective communication of your findings. This section provides valuable guidance on how to structure and write a successful research paper that showcases your understanding of this significant historical period. By following these ten tips, you can craft a compelling and insightful paper on the Great Depression.
- Formulate a Clear Thesis Statement : Start your research paper with a clear and concise thesis statement that articulates the main argument or focus of your study. The thesis statement should guide your research and provide a roadmap for your paper, ensuring coherence and direction throughout.
- Conduct In-Depth Research : Engage in thorough research to gather relevant and reliable sources that support your thesis statement. Utilize primary and secondary sources to gain a comprehensive understanding of the Great Depression, its causes, impact, and historical context. Take notes and organize your research material for easy reference.
- Analyze Primary and Secondary Sources : Carefully analyze the primary and secondary sources you have collected. Critically evaluate the credibility, biases, and limitations of each source. Extract key information and evidence that supports your thesis and provides a robust foundation for your arguments.
- Outline Your Paper : Create a clear and detailed outline that serves as a roadmap for your research paper. Organize your main points, arguments, and supporting evidence in a logical and coherent manner. The outline will help you maintain focus, structure your paper, and ensure a smooth flow of ideas.
- Develop a Strong Introduction : Craft an engaging introduction that captures the reader’s attention and provides context for your research. Clearly state your thesis statement and provide a brief overview of the main points you will discuss in your paper. Set the tone for your research and highlight the significance of studying the Great Depression.
- Present a Coherent Argument : Structure your paper around a well-developed argument that supports your thesis statement. Present your main points in a logical sequence, providing evidence and analysis to support each claim. Ensure that your arguments flow smoothly and are interconnected, building a coherent narrative throughout your paper.
- Analyze Primary and Secondary Sources : Integrate your analysis of primary and secondary sources into your research paper. Use direct quotes, paraphrasing, and summarization techniques to incorporate evidence from your sources. Analyze the sources critically, demonstrating your ability to interpret and evaluate historical material.
- Provide Historical Context : Situate your research within the historical context of the Great Depression. Provide background information, discuss relevant events, policies, and social conditions that influenced the period. Help your readers understand the broader significance of your research and its relationship to the historical context.
- Use Clear and Concise Language : Write in a clear and concise manner, avoiding unnecessary jargon or complex language. Ensure that your ideas are easily understandable and your arguments are well-articulated. Use proper grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure to enhance the clarity and readability of your paper.
- Conclude with a Strong Summary : End your research paper with a strong and concise summary that restates your thesis statement and highlights the key findings of your study. Emphasize the significance of your research and its contribution to the understanding of the Great Depression. Reflect on the implications and broader lessons that can be drawn from your analysis.
Writing a research paper on the Great Depression requires careful planning, thorough research, and effective communication of your findings. By formulating a clear thesis statement, conducting in-depth research, and analyzing primary and secondary sources, you can develop a strong foundation for your paper. Organizing your thoughts with a well-structured outline, crafting an engaging introduction, and presenting a coherent argument will ensure a compelling and insightful research paper. Remember to provide historical context, use clear and concise language, and conclude with a strong summary that highlights the significance of your research. By following these ten tips, you will be well-prepared to write a comprehensive and impactful research paper on the Great Depression.
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What was the Great Depression?
What were the causes of the great depression, how did the great depression affect the american economy, how did the united states and other countries recover from the great depression, when did the great depression end.
Great Depression
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- EH.net - An Overview of the Great Depression
- Academia - The Great Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression in the Global Context
- The Balance - The Great Depression, What Happened, What Caused It, How It Ended
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- Table Of Contents
The Great Depression, which began in the United States in 1929 and spread worldwide, was the longest and most severe economic downturn in modern history. It was marked by steep declines in industrial production and in prices (deflation), mass unemployment , banking panics, and sharp increases in rates of poverty and homelessness.
Four factors played roles of varying importance. (1) The stock market crash of 1929 shattered confidence in the American economy, resulting in sharp reductions in spending and investment. (2) Banking panics in the early 1930s caused many banks to fail, decreasing the pool of money available for loans. (3) The gold standard required foreign central banks to raise interest rates to counteract trade imbalances with the United States, depressing spending and investment in those countries. (4) The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930) imposed steep tariffs on many industrial and agricultural goods, inviting retaliatory measures that ultimately reduced output and caused global trade to contract.
In the United States, where the Depression was generally worst, industrial production between 1929 and 1933 fell by nearly 47 percent, gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 30 percent, and unemployment reached more than 20 percent. Because of banking panics, 20 percent of banks in existence in 1930 had failed by 1933.
Three factors played roles of varying importance. (1) Abandonment of the gold standard and currency devaluation enabled some countries to increase their money supplies, which spurred spending, lending, and investment. (2) Fiscal expansion in the form of increased government spending on jobs and other social welfare programs , notably the New Deal in the United States, arguably stimulated production by increasing aggregate demand. (3) In the United States, greatly increased military spending in the years before the country’s entry into World War II helped to reduce unemployment to below its pre-Depression level by 1942, again increasing aggregate demand.
In most affected countries, the Great Depression was technically over by 1933, meaning that by then their economies had started to recover. Most did not experience full recovery until the late 1930s or early 1940s, however. The United States is generally thought to have fully recovered from the Great Depression by about 1939.
Great Depression , worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. Although it originated in the United States , the Great Depression caused drastic declines in output, severe unemployment , and acute deflation in almost every country of the world. Its social and cultural effects were no less staggering, especially in the United States, where the Great Depression represented the harshest adversity faced by Americans since the Civil War .
Economic history
The timing and severity of the Great Depression varied substantially across countries. The Depression was particularly long and severe in the United States and Europe ; it was milder in Japan and much of Latin America. Perhaps not surprisingly, the worst depression ever experienced by the world economy stemmed from a multitude of causes. Declines in consumer demand , financial panics , and misguided government policies caused economic output to fall in the United States, while the gold standard , which linked nearly all the countries of the world in a network of fixed currency exchange rates , played a key role in transmitting the American downturn to other countries. The recovery from the Great Depression was spurred largely by the abandonment of the gold standard and the ensuing monetary expansion. The economic impact of the Great Depression was enormous, including both extreme human suffering and profound changes in economic policy .
The Great Depression began in the United States as an ordinary recession in the summer of 1929. The downturn became markedly worse, however, in late 1929 and continued until early 1933. Real output and prices fell precipitously. Between the peak and the trough of the downturn, industrial production in the United States declined 47 percent and real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 30 percent. The wholesale price index declined 33 percent (such declines in the price level are referred to as deflation ). Although there is some debate about the reliability of the statistics, it is widely agreed that the unemployment rate exceeded 20 percent at its highest point. The severity of the Great Depression in the United States becomes especially clear when it is compared with America’s next worst recession, the Great Recession of 2007–09, during which the country’s real GDP declined just 4.3 percent and the unemployment rate peaked at less than 10 percent.
The Depression affected virtually every country of the world. However, the dates and magnitude of the downturn varied substantially across countries. Great Britain struggled with low growth and recession during most of the second half of the 1920s. The country did not slip into severe depression, however, until early 1930, and its peak-to-trough decline in industrial production was roughly one-third that of the United States. France also experienced a relatively short downturn in the early 1930s. The French recovery in 1932 and 1933, however, was short-lived. French industrial production and prices both fell substantially between 1933 and 1936. Germany ’s economy slipped into a downturn early in 1928 and then stabilized before turning down again in the third quarter of 1929. The decline in German industrial production was roughly equal to that in the United States. A number of countries in Latin America fell into depression in late 1928 and early 1929, slightly before the U.S. decline in output. While some less-developed countries experienced severe depressions, others, such as Argentina and Brazil , experienced comparatively mild downturns. Japan also experienced a mild depression, which began relatively late and ended relatively early.
The general price deflation evident in the United States was also present in other countries. Virtually every industrialized country endured declines in wholesale prices of 30 percent or more between 1929 and 1933. Because of the greater flexibility of the Japanese price structure, deflation in Japan was unusually rapid in 1930 and 1931. This rapid deflation may have helped to keep the decline in Japanese production relatively mild. The prices of primary commodities traded in world markets declined even more dramatically during this period. For example, the prices of coffee, cotton, silk, and rubber were reduced by roughly half just between September 1929 and December 1930. As a result, the terms of trade declined precipitously for producers of primary commodities .
The U.S. recovery began in the spring of 1933. Output grew rapidly in the mid-1930s: real GDP rose at an average rate of 9 percent per year between 1933 and 1937. Output had fallen so deeply in the early years of the 1930s, however, that it remained substantially below its long-run trend path throughout this period. In 1937–38 the United States suffered another severe downturn, but after mid-1938 the American economy grew even more rapidly than in the mid-1930s. The country’s output finally returned to its long-run trend path in 1942.
Recovery in the rest of the world varied greatly. The British economy stopped declining soon after Great Britain abandoned the gold standard in September 1931, although genuine recovery did not begin until the end of 1932. The economies of a number of Latin American countries began to strengthen in late 1931 and early 1932. Germany and Japan both began to recover in the fall of 1932. Canada and many smaller European countries started to revive at about the same time as the United States, early in 1933. On the other hand, France, which experienced severe depression later than most countries, did not firmly enter the recovery phase until 1938.
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Mental Health Thesis Statement
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Published: Mar 13, 2024
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1. the importance of mental health awareness and support, 2. the implications of neglecting mental health, 3. strategies for promoting mental health and well-being.
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How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples
Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.
A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .
Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.
You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:
- Start with a question
- Write your initial answer
- Develop your answer
- Refine your thesis statement
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Table of contents
What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.
A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.
The best thesis statements are:
- Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
- Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
- Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.
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The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .
The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.
You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.
You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?
For example, you might ask:
After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .
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Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.
In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.
The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.
In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.
The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.
A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:
- Why you hold this position
- What they’ll learn from your essay
- The key points of your argument or narrative
The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.
These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.
Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:
- In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
- In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.
If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!
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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.
The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:
- It gives your writing direction and focus.
- It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.
Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.
Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :
- Ask a question about your topic .
- Write your initial answer.
- Develop your answer by including reasons.
- Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.
The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .
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25 Thesis Statement Examples That Will Make Writing a Breeze
Understanding what makes a good thesis statement is one of the major keys to writing a great research paper or argumentative essay. The thesis statement is where you make a claim that will guide you through your entire paper. If you find yourself struggling to make sense of your paper or your topic, then it's likely due to a weak thesis statement.
Let's take a minute to first understand what makes a solid thesis statement, and what key components you need to write one of your own.
A thesis statement always goes at the beginning of the paper. It will typically be in the first couple of paragraphs of the paper so that it can introduce the body paragraphs, which are the supporting evidence for your thesis statement.
Your thesis statement should clearly identify an argument. You need to have a statement that is not only easy to understand, but one that is debatable. What that means is that you can't just put any statement of fact and have it be your thesis. For example, everyone knows that puppies are cute . An ineffective thesis statement would be, "Puppies are adorable and everyone knows it." This isn't really something that's a debatable topic.
Something that would be more debatable would be, "A puppy's cuteness is derived from its floppy ears, small body, and playfulness." These are three things that can be debated on. Some people might think that the cutest thing about puppies is the fact that they follow you around or that they're really soft and fuzzy.
All cuteness aside, you want to make sure that your thesis statement is not only debatable, but that it also actually thoroughly answers the research question that was posed. You always want to make sure that your evidence is supporting a claim that you made (and not the other way around). This is why it's crucial to read and research about a topic first and come to a conclusion later. If you try to get your research to fit your thesis statement, then it may not work out as neatly as you think. As you learn more, you discover more (and the outcome may not be what you originally thought).
Additionally, your thesis statement shouldn't be too big or too grand. It'll be hard to cover everything in a thesis statement like, "The federal government should act now on climate change." The topic is just too large to actually say something new and meaningful. Instead, a more effective thesis statement might be, "Local governments can combat climate change by providing citizens with larger recycling bins and offering local classes about composting and conservation." This is easier to work with because it's a smaller idea, but you can also discuss the overall topic that you might be interested in, which is climate change.
So, now that we know what makes a good, solid thesis statement, you can start to write your own. If you find that you're getting stuck or you are the type of person who needs to look at examples before you start something, then check out our list of thesis statement examples below.
Thesis statement examples
A quick note that these thesis statements have not been fully researched. These are merely examples to show you what a thesis statement might look like and how you can implement your own ideas into one that you think of independently. As such, you should not use these thesis statements for your own research paper purposes. They are meant to be used as examples only.
- Vaccinations Because many children are unable to vaccinate due to illness, we must require that all healthy and able children be vaccinated in order to have herd immunity.
- Educational Resources for Low-Income Students Schools should provide educational resources for low-income students during the summers so that they don't forget what they've learned throughout the school year.
- School Uniforms School uniforms may be an upfront cost for families, but they eradicate the visual differences in income between students and provide a more egalitarian atmosphere at school.
- Populism The rise in populism on the 2016 political stage was in reaction to increasing globalization, the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the Syrian refugee crisis.
- Public Libraries Libraries are essential resources for communities and should be funded more heavily by local municipalities.
- Cyber Bullying With more and more teens using smartphones and social media, cyber bullying is on the rise. Cyber bullying puts a lot of stress on many teens, and can cause depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. Parents should limit the usage of smart phones, monitor their children's online activity, and report any cyber bullying to school officials in order to combat this problem.
- Medical Marijuana for Veterans Studies have shown that the use of medicinal marijuana has been helpful to veterans who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Medicinal marijuana prescriptions should be legal in all states and provided to these veterans. Additional medical or therapy services should also be researched and implemented in order to help them re-integrate back into civilian life.
- Work-Life Balance Corporations should provide more work from home opportunities and six-hour workdays so that office workers have a better work-life balance and are more likely to be productive when they are in the office.
- Teaching Youths about Consensual Sex Although sex education that includes a discussion of consensual sex would likely lead to less sexual assault, parents need to teach their children the meaning of consent from a young age with age appropriate lessons.
- Whether or Not to Attend University A degree from a university provides invaluable lessons on life and a future career, but not every high school student should be encouraged to attend a university directly after graduation. Some students may benefit from a trade school or a "gap year" where they can think more intensely about what it is they want to do for a career and how they can accomplish this.
- Studying Abroad Studying abroad is one of the most culturally valuable experiences you can have in college. It is the only way to get completely immersed in another language and learn how other cultures and countries are different from your own.
- Women's Body Image Magazines have done a lot in the last five years to include a more diverse group of models, but there is still a long way to go to promote a healthy woman's body image collectively as a culture.
- Cigarette Tax Heavily taxing and increasing the price of cigarettes is essentially a tax on the poorest Americans, and it doesn't deter them from purchasing. Instead, the state and federal governments should target those economically disenfranchised with early education about the dangers of smoking.
- Veganism A vegan diet, while a healthy and ethical way to consume food, indicates a position of privilege. It also limits you to other cultural food experiences if you travel around the world.
- University Athletes Should be Compensated University athletes should be compensated for their service to the university, as it is difficult for these students to procure and hold a job with busy academic and athletic schedules. Many student athletes on scholarship also come from low-income neighborhoods and it is a struggle to make ends meet when they are participating in athletics.
- Women in the Workforce Sheryl Sandberg makes a lot of interesting points in her best-selling book, Lean In , but she only addressed the very privileged working woman and failed to speak to those in lower-skilled, lower-wage jobs.
- Assisted Suicide Assisted suicide should be legal and doctors should have the ability to make sure their patients have the end-of-life care that they want to receive.
- Celebrity and Political Activism Although Taylor Swift's lyrics are indicative of a feminist perspective, she should be more politically active and vocal to use her position of power for the betterment of society.
- The Civil War The insistence from many Southerners that the South seceded from the Union for states' rights versus the fact that they seceded for the purposes of continuing slavery is a harmful myth that still affects race relations today.
- Blue Collar Workers Coal miners and other blue-collar workers whose jobs are slowly disappearing from the workforce should be re-trained in jobs in the technology sector or in renewable energy. A program to re-train these workers would not only improve local economies where jobs have been displaced, but would also lead to lower unemployment nationally.
- Diversity in the Workforce Having a diverse group of people in an office setting leads to richer ideas, more cooperation, and more empathy between people with different skin colors or backgrounds.
- Re-Imagining the Nuclear Family The nuclear family was traditionally defined as one mother, one father, and 2.5 children. This outdated depiction of family life doesn't quite fit with modern society. The definition of normal family life shouldn't be limited to two-parent households.
- Digital Literacy Skills With more information readily available than ever before, it's crucial that students are prepared to examine the material they're reading and determine whether or not it's a good source or if it has misleading information. Teaching students digital literacy and helping them to understand the difference between opinion or propaganda from legitimate, real information is integral.
- Beauty Pageants Beauty pageants are presented with the angle that they empower women. However, putting women in a swimsuit on a stage while simultaneously judging them on how well they answer an impossible question in a short period of time is cruel and purely for the amusement of men. Therefore, we should stop televising beauty pageants.
- Supporting More Women to Run for a Political Position In order to get more women into political positions, more women must run for office. There must be a grassroots effort to educate women on how to run for office, who among them should run, and support for a future candidate for getting started on a political career.
Still stuck? Need some help with your thesis statement?
If you are still uncertain about how to write a thesis statement or what a good thesis statement is, be sure to consult with your teacher or professor to make sure you're on the right track. It's always a good idea to check in and make sure that your thesis statement is making a solid argument and that it can be supported by your research.
After you're done writing, it's important to have someone take a second look at your paper so that you can ensure there are no mistakes or errors. It's difficult to spot your own mistakes, which is why it's always recommended to have someone help you with the revision process, whether that's a teacher, the writing center at school, or a professional editor such as one from ServiceScape .
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What is a good thesis statement for the Great Depression?
Kkfinney28411 is waiting for your help., ai-generated answer.
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Final answer:
A thesis statement that argues the Great Depression's causes and posits the influence of Keynesian economics as a hypothetical solution also offers modern economic insights.
Explanation:
A strong thesis statement for an essay on the Great Depression could be: "The Great Depression, a period of unprecedented economic hardship, was a result of a confluence of factors, including the stock market crash of 1929, widespread bank failures, and insufficient government intervention, but a closer examination suggests that the implementation of the economic philosophies of Keynes, with his advocacy for government stimulus, might have alleviated the crisis and possibly offers lessons applicable to modern economic challenges."
This statement sets the stage for a detailed analysis of the economic conditions during the Great Depression and a comparison to the current state of the economy, while also opening a discussion on the potential impact of Keynesian economic philosophies on both periods. It incorporates the historical context, identifies the main causes of the depression, and posits a hypothetical scenario where different economic policies might have changed the course of history, inviting a deeper exploration into the role of economic theories in managing large-scale economic downturns.
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Get more answers for free, you might be interested in, new questions in social studies.
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How To Write A Strong Essay On Depression?
Table of Contents
Looking for useful information that will help you write a powerful essay on depression? You’ve come to the right place, then!
Depression is a worldwide spread disease that negatively affects how people feel, the way they think, and how they act. It is also the leading cause of disability. There are estimates that more than 300 million people are affected by depression globally, and this condition is also one of the most common mental disorders in the USA.
No wonder depression essay is a typical assignment for high school and college students. The goal of writing about this mental condition is to increase awareness among young people about mental health and help them find solutions to this problem.
In this guide, you will find all the necessary information for writing the best essays on this topic.
Depression essay: what’s the deal?
At some point in our lives, we all may experience symptoms like sadness, loss of interest, lack of pleasure from performing daily activities, etc.
For most people, these symptoms are a completely normal response to unpleasant or stressful events that they experience, for example, romantic relationships failures or financial issues.
Negative feelings are usually painful and overwhelming, but as time goes by, they become less intense and disappear.
But if these feelings persist, they may affect people’s life substantially and result in depression.
In recent decades, clinical depression has reached epidemic proportions and is widespread in the suburbs inner cities, farms, refugee camps, boardrooms, and classrooms, and women are more likely to be depressed than man.
Recent research reveals that the United States is the most depressed country in the world.
When writing an essay about this mental illness, you need to examine different aspects. For example, you may write a postpartum depression essay or explore how this mental condition affects the brain, personality, and physical health.
The choice of topics is endless, but you should follow standard writing requirements when working on your projects. Let’s discuss some important steps of writing an essay about mental disorders in detail.
Depression research paper outline: a brief how-to
Many students skip this stage in the writing process and as a result, may waste a lot of time when doing research and actually writing.
Creating a working outline for your project is an essential step that will help you stay focused and increase your overall productivity. Never skip this crucial step if you want to succeed.
Here are some tips on how you can do it right.
- Choose a topic for your research and do some preliminary reading. Search for some interesting facts and try to think about new ways to address your topic. Scan some articles and look for knowledge gaps.
- Take notes when you see an interesting quote and create a list of your sources. You can use them as references in your essay. Keep all the information you have gathered in one place.
- Write down the objective of your essay in one sentence. Think about the outcome you want to achieve when other people read your essay.
- Look through your notes and make a list of all the important points you want to make. Use brainstorming techniques and write down all ideas that pop into your head.
- Review the points and create a thesis statement for depression research paper or essay.
- Organize the list of points to create a structure of your essay . Put the points in a logical order. Check all aspects to make sure that each of them is relevant to your objective.
- Revise all your points and try to put your outline in a standard format: numbered or bulleted list.
Depression essay introduction: how to start?
The introduction of your essay should provide some context and prepare your readers for the arguments you would present next.
Start your introduction with an attention grabber to engage your audience. It can be a provocative question, statistics, an anecdote, an interesting fact, etc.
Introduce your specific topic and provide some context to help your readers understand your paper. For example, you can define some key terms.
Finish your introduction with a strong thesis statement that clearly and concisely states the central argument or the purpose of your paper.
e.g., Students who drop out of a high school before graduation are more susceptible to depression and anxiety and have a higher risk of facing mental and physical health problems later in life.
You may also briefly outline the major points of your paper to help your audience follow your argument.
Depression essay conclusion: what should be included?
The conclusion is the last chance to impress your readers so it can be the most challenging part of an essay to write.
It should give your paper a sense of completeness and answer the question, “so what?”
You need to restate your main claim and tie that claim to a larger discussion. Don’t introduce any new ideas or subtopics here.
You can conclude your paper using one of the following strategies:
- Call for a specific action.
- Outline next steps for other researchers.
- Speak about future implications.
- Compare different situations or issues.
- Use a quotation.
- Ask a provocative question.
The use of depression essay example
A good essay example may help you understand how your project must be written. You can find a lot of essay examples online or order a well-written example from a professional writer.
You should read it and analyze what strategies and techniques are used to convey the main ideas and make an impression on readers.
Besides, you can get a better understanding of how you can structure your paper and what transitions you can use to ensure a logical flow of ideas.
Essay on depression: what to cover?
Writing about depression in college essay can involve a lot of different topics, especially those connected with the epidemic of mental disorders in teens.
For example, you may write causes of teenage depression essay and discuss multiple factors that create chemical imbalances in the human brain which may result in mental disorders and lead to such symptoms like anger, irritability, and agitation:
- Biological factors – family history of mental disorders.
- Social factors – loneliness and isolation, lack of meaningful relationships with family or peers.
- Behavioral factors – alcohol or drug abuse.
- Psychological factors – early childhood trauma, recent stressful experiences like a death in the family.
TOP-10 depression essay topics
- Effects of mood disorders on physical health.
- Causes of depression among teens.
- Compare depression and bipolar disorder.
- Neurodegenerative effects of long-term depression.
- Mental disorders and personality changes in adults.
- Impact of psychological stress on mental disorders.
- Teen depression and suicide.
- Depression symptoms in children and adults.
- Are we witnessing an epidemic of serious mood disorders?
- Digital media and mental disorders in children.
Argumentative essay on depression: how to prove you’re right?
Argumentative essay on depression is a more complex task because you need to take a stance and create a convincing argument to persuade your readers and make them accept your point of view or take a specific action.
You need compelling evidence to support your claims and main points.
Consult credible online sources, for example, a website of the American Psychiatric Association, to find some facts or statistics about mental disorders or news about current research on the topic.
Review some statistics which you can use to support your argument.
- According to estimates, about 15% of adults experience depressive episodes in their lifetime.
- About 5% of the US population experience seasonal depression every year.
- The most “depressed” countries in the world are the USA, France, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Colombia.
- Japan has one of the lowest depression rates in the world, but it has one of the highest suicide rates, which is one of the leading causes of death among Japanese teens.
- 4.8% of men and 8.5% of women suffer from depression in the USA.
- The median age of people experiencing a major depressive episode is 32.
- More than 44,000 American commit suicide each year and it’s the 2nd leading cause of death for young people aged from 15 to 24.
Argumentative essay topics about depression
- Is there any correlation between burnout, depression, and anxiety?
- How to deal with a crisis when living with mental disorders?
- Is it common to have both anxiety and depression at the same time?
- Can sleep deprivation cause mental disorders?
- Is there any relationship between the consumption of certain food and mental disorders?
- Can food help with overcoming anxiety?
- Social media obsession and mental health issues.
- Why do a lot of teens struggle with mental disorders?
- Can exercise treat mental health issues?
- How can we tell the difference between grief and depression?
Feel free to choose any of these interesting topics and write your own depression essay.
Although mental disorders are a complicated thing to write about, you are much likely to successfully cope with this challenging task if you follow our easy guidelines.
Depressed with the task to write depression? Forget the anxiety! Order your paper within three clicks and enjoy the bright side of life!
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Article Contents
I. introduction, ii. narrative, iii. analysis, iv. what are the policy lessons, lessons from the 1930s great depression.
We thank Steve Broadberry and Ken Wallis for helpful discussions. Christopher Adam, Ken Mayhew, and, especially, Christopher Allsopp made very thoughtful comments on an earlier draft. The usual disclaimer applies.
- Article contents
- Figures & tables
- Supplementary Data
Nicholas Crafts, Peter Fearon, Lessons from the 1930s Great Depression, Oxford Review of Economic Policy , Volume 26, Issue 3, Autumn 2010, Pages 285–317, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grq030
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This paper provides a survey of the Great Depression comprising both a narrative account and a detailed review of the empirical evidence, focusing especially on the experience of the United States. We examine the reasons for and flawed resolution of the American banking crisis, as well as the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy. We also consider the pivotal role of the gold standard in the international transmission of the slump and leaving gold as a route to recovery. Policy lessons for today from the Great Depression are discussed, as are some implications for macroeconomics.
The Great Depression deserves its title. The economic crisis that began in 1929 soon engulfed virtually every manufacturing country and all food and raw materials producers. In 1931, Keynes observed that the world was then ‘in the middle of the greatest economic catastrophe . . . of the modern world . . . there is a possibility that when this crisis is looked back upon by the economic historian of the future it will be seen to mark one of the major turning points’ ( Keynes, 1931 ). Keynes was right; Table 1 shows some of the dimensions.
The Great Depression vs Great Recession in the advanced countries
. | . | . | . | . |
---|---|---|---|---|
1929 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 7.2 | 100.0 |
1930 | 95.2 | 90.8 | 14.1 | 94.8 |
1931 | 89.2 | 79.9 | 22.8 | 89.5 |
1932 | 83.3 | 73.1 | 31.4 | 76.5 |
1933 | 84.3 | 71.7 | 29.8 | 78.4 |
1934 | 89.0 | 75.3 | 23.9 | 79.6 |
1935 | 94.0 | 77.6 | 21.9 | 81.8 |
1936 | 100.6 | 81.4 | 18.0 | 85.7 |
1937 | 105.3 | 91.5 | 14.3 | 97.4 |
1938 | 105.4 | 90.4 | 16.5 | 87.0 |
2007 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 5.4 | 100.0 |
2008 | 100.5 | 102.0 | 5.8 | 100.6 |
2009 | 97.3 | 102.9 | 8.0 | 85.0 |
2010 | 99.6 | 103.7 | 8.4 | 93.3 |
. | . | . | . | . |
---|---|---|---|---|
1929 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 7.2 | 100.0 |
1930 | 95.2 | 90.8 | 14.1 | 94.8 |
1931 | 89.2 | 79.9 | 22.8 | 89.5 |
1932 | 83.3 | 73.1 | 31.4 | 76.5 |
1933 | 84.3 | 71.7 | 29.8 | 78.4 |
1934 | 89.0 | 75.3 | 23.9 | 79.6 |
1935 | 94.0 | 77.6 | 21.9 | 81.8 |
1936 | 100.6 | 81.4 | 18.0 | 85.7 |
1937 | 105.3 | 91.5 | 14.3 | 97.4 |
1938 | 105.4 | 90.4 | 16.5 | 87.0 |
2007 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 5.4 | 100.0 |
2008 | 100.5 | 102.0 | 5.8 | 100.6 |
2009 | 97.3 | 102.9 | 8.0 | 85.0 |
2010 | 99.6 | 103.7 | 8.4 | 93.3 |
Sources : 1929–38: Real GDP: Maddison (2010) western European countries plus western offshoots; Price level: League of Nations (1941) ; data are for wholesale prices, weighted average of 17 countries; Unemployment: Eichengreen and Hatton (1987) ; data are for industrial unemployment, weighted average of 11 countries; Trade volume: Maddison (1985) , weighted average of 16 countries.
2007–2010: IMF, World Economic Outlook Database, April 2010.
What are the key questions that we should ask about the Great Depression? Why the crisis began in 1929 is an obvious start, but more important questions are why it was so deep and why it lasted so long? Sustained recovery did not begin in the United States until the spring of 1933, though the UK trough occurred in late 1931 and in Germany during the following year. Why and how did the depression spread so that it became an international catastrophe? What role did financial crises play in prolonging and transmitting economic shocks? How effective were national economic policy measures designed to lessen the impact of the depression? Did governments try to coordinate their economic policies? If not, then why not? Why did the intensity of the depression and the recovery from it vary so markedly between countries?
Even in recovery, both the UK and the USA experienced persistent mass unemployment, which was the curse of the depression decade ( Table 2 ). Why did the eradication of unemployment prove to be so intractable? In 1937–8 a further sharp depression hit the US economy, increasing unemployment and imposing further deflation. What caused this serious downturn and what lessons did policy-makers draw from it?
The Great Depression in the United Kingdom and the United States
. | . | . | . | . |
---|---|---|---|---|
1929 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 8.0 | 100.0 |
1930 | 99.9 | 99.6 | 12.3 | 80.5 |
1931 | 94.4 | 97.2 | 16.4 | 62.8 |
1932 | 95.1 | 93.7 | 17.0 | 60.2 |
1933 | 96.0 | 92.5 | 15.4 | 74.3 |
1934 | 102.8 | 91.7 | 12.9 | 90.3 |
1935 | 106.6 | 92.6 | 12.0 | 100.0 |
1936 | 109.9 | 93.1 | 10.2 | 115.9 |
1937 | 114.7 | 96.6 | 8.5 | 108.0 |
1938 | 118.2 | 99.3 | 10.1 | 88.5 |
1929 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 2.9 | 100.0 |
1930 | 91.4 | 96.4 | 8.9 | 69.4 |
1931 | 85.6 | 86.3 | 15.6 | 35.8 |
1932 | 74.4 | 76.2 | 22.9 | 30.8 |
1933 | 73.4 | 74.2 | 20.9 | 46.2 |
1934 | 81.3 | 78.4 | 16.2 | 45.8 |
1935 | 88.6 | 79.9 | 14.4 | 63.1 |
1936 | 100.0 | 80.7 | 10.0 | 79.8 |
1937 | 105.3 | 84.1 | 9.2 | 50.5 |
1938 | 101.6 | 81.7 | 12.5 | 61.7 |
. | . | . | . | . |
---|---|---|---|---|
1929 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 8.0 | 100.0 |
1930 | 99.9 | 99.6 | 12.3 | 80.5 |
1931 | 94.4 | 97.2 | 16.4 | 62.8 |
1932 | 95.1 | 93.7 | 17.0 | 60.2 |
1933 | 96.0 | 92.5 | 15.4 | 74.3 |
1934 | 102.8 | 91.7 | 12.9 | 90.3 |
1935 | 106.6 | 92.6 | 12.0 | 100.0 |
1936 | 109.9 | 93.1 | 10.2 | 115.9 |
1937 | 114.7 | 96.6 | 8.5 | 108.0 |
1938 | 118.2 | 99.3 | 10.1 | 88.5 |
1929 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 2.9 | 100.0 |
1930 | 91.4 | 96.4 | 8.9 | 69.4 |
1931 | 85.6 | 86.3 | 15.6 | 35.8 |
1932 | 74.4 | 76.2 | 22.9 | 30.8 |
1933 | 73.4 | 74.2 | 20.9 | 46.2 |
1934 | 81.3 | 78.4 | 16.2 | 45.8 |
1935 | 88.6 | 79.9 | 14.4 | 63.1 |
1936 | 100.0 | 80.7 | 10.0 | 79.8 |
1937 | 105.3 | 84.1 | 9.2 | 50.5 |
1938 | 101.6 | 81.7 | 12.5 | 61.7 |
Note : Unemployment based on the whole-economy series constructed by Weir (1992) .
Sources : UK: Real GDP: Feinstein (1972) ; GDP deflator: Feinstein (1972) ; Unemployment: Boyer and Hatton (2002) ; Stock market prices: Mitchell (1988) . USA : Carter et al . (2006) .
By the late twentieth century, the memory of international financial seizure in the US and Europe, mass unemployment, and severe deflation had receded. However, during 2007–8, an astonishing and unexpected collapse occurred which caused all key economic variables to fall at a faster rate than they had during the early 1930s. As Eichengreen and O’Rourke (2010) report, the volume of world trade, the performance of equity markets, and industrial output dropped steeply in 2008. Moreover, a full-blown financial crisis quickly emerged. The US housing boom collapsed and sub-prime mortgages, which had been an attractive investment both at home and abroad, now became a millstone round the necks of those financial institutions that had eagerly snapped them up. In April 2007, New Century Financial, one of the largest sub-prime lenders in the US, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In August, Bear Stearns, an international finance house heavily involved in the sub-prime market, teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. The US Treasury helped finance its sale to J. P. Morgan during the following year. During 2008 the financial crisis developed with a sudden and terrifying force. In September, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which together accounted for half of the outstanding mortgages in the US, were subject to a federal takeover because their financial condition had deteriorated so rapidly. At the same time Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the US, declared bankruptcy. It seemed as if financial meltdown was not only a possibility, it was a certainty unless drastic action was taken.
The crisis was not confined to the US. In August 2007, the French bank, BNP Paribas, suspended three investment funds worth €2 billion because of problems in the US sub-prime sector. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank was forced to intervene to restore calm to distressed credit markets which were badly affected by losses from sub-prime hedge funds. On 14 September 2007, the British public became aware that Northern Rock, which had moved into sub-prime lending after concluding a deal with Lehman Brothers, had approached the Bank of England for an emergency loan. Immediately the bank’s shares fell by 32 per cent and queues formed outside branch offices as frantic depositors rushed to withdraw their savings. Such was the pressure that Northern Rock was nationalized in February 2008. The run on Northern Rock was an extraordinary event for the UK. During the Great Depression no British financial institution failed, or looked like failing, but in 2007 there was immediate depositor panic. It was clear that without some assurance on the security of deposits other institutions were at risk. In 2009, UK GDP contracted by 4.8 per cent, the steepest fall since 1921.
A comparison of the catastrophic banking crisis in 1931 with that of 2007–8 shows that the countries involved in 1931 accounted for 55.6 per cent of world GDP, while the figure for the latter period is 33.5 per cent ( Reinhart, 2010 ; Maddison, 2010 ). This is the most widespread banking crisis since 1931 and it is also the first time since that date that major European countries and the United States have both been involved. The financial tidal wave was totally unexpected and was of such severity that immediate policy action was required to prevent total meltdown. For a while it seemed that the world stood at the edge of an abyss, a short step away from an even greater economic disaster than had occurred three-quarters of a century earlier.
In these circumstances, it has been natural to ask what the historical experience of the crisis of the 1930s has to teach us. The big lesson that has been correctly identified is not to be passive in the face of large adverse financial shocks. Indeed, aggressive monetary and fiscal policies were immediately implemented to halt the financial disintegration. Fortunately, countries were not constrained by the oppressive stranglehold of the gold standard. Both monetary and fiscal policies could be used to support economic expansion rather than to impose deflation or try to restore a balanced budget. Flexible exchange rates gave policy-makers the freedom to use devaluation as an aid to recovery. The exception was in the Eurozone, where weak member states, for example, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, were forced to deflate their economies ( Eichengreen and Temin, 2010 , this issue).
In the United States, the Fed began aggressively to lower interest rates in January 2008 and by the year’s end had adopted a zero-rate policy. Quantitative easing was used on a massive scale during 2008 through to early 2010 and, as a result, the money supply rose dramatically. The American Restoration and Recovery Act, which became law in early 2009, earmarked $787 billion to stimulate the economy and was described by Christina Romer, distinguished economic historian of the great depression and Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, as ‘the biggest and boldest countercyclical action in American History’ ( Romer, 2009 ). In the UK, the Bank of England adopted the lowest interest rates since its foundation in 1694, quantitative easing was used aggressively, and bank bail-outs were funded where necessary. In October 2007 the guarantee for UK bank deposits was raised to £36,000 per depositor and further increased to £50,000 during the following year. In both countries, monetary and fiscal policies were pursued on a scale that would have been unacceptable during the 1930s but, crucially, these bold initiatives prevented financial meltdown. Fortunately, the crisis did not encourage the adoption of the beggar-thy-neighbour policies that helped to reduce the level of international trade so drastically during the 1930s.
This represents a dramatic contrast with the policy stances of 80 years ago. Thus far, the upshot is that a repeat of the Great Depression has been avoided ( Table 1 ). A dramatic financial collapse has been averted, economic recovery, though tenuous, is progressing, and unemployment has not reached the levels that some commentators feared when the downturn began. As we shall see, the ‘experiment’ of the 1930s shows only too clearly the likely outcome in the absence of an aggressive policy response.
The 1930s has more to offer. In particular, we can look not only at the downturn but also the recovery phase. Here the issues that had to be addressed included re-regulation of the banking system, avoiding a double-dip recession, and dealing with the various legacies of the depression which included long-term unemployment and the need for a new, post-gold-standard, macroeconomic policy framework.
This paper proceeds in the following way. Section II provides a narrative of events, section III delivers an analysis of the 1930s depression, and section IV identifies important policy lessons from that experience.
(i) The context of the Great Depression
It is sensible to begin an investigation of the Great Depression with an analysis of the world’s most powerful economy, the USA. During the 1920s America became the vital engine for sustained recovery from the effects of the Great War and for the maintenance of international economic stability. Following a rapid recovery from the post-war slump of 1920–1, Americans enjoyed until the end of the decade a great consumer boom, which was heavily dependent upon the automobile and the building sectors. High levels of investment, significant productivity advances, stable prices, full employment, tranquil labour relations, high wages, and high company profits combined to create the perfect conditions for a stock-market boom. Many contemporaries believed that a new age of cooperative capitalism had dawned in sharp contrast to the weak economies of class-ridden Europe ( Barber, 1985 ).
America was linked to the rest of the world through international trade as the world’s leading exporter and second, behind the UK, as an importer. Furthermore, after 1918 America replaced Britain as the world’s leading international lender. The First World War imposed an onerous and potentially destabilizing indebtedness on many of the world’s economies. Massive war debts accumulated by Britain and France were owed to both the US government and to US private citizens. Britain and France sought punitive damages from Germany in the form of reparations. But the post-war network of inter-government indebtedness eventually involved 28 countries, with Germany the most heavily in debt and the US owed 40 per cent of total receipts ( Wolf, 2010 , this issue).
Between 1924 and 1931 the US was responsible for about 60 per cent of total international lending, about one-third of which was absorbed by Germany. American investors, attracted by relatively high interest rates, enabled Germany both to discharge reparations responsibilities and to fund considerable improvements in living standards. Austria, Hungary, Greece, Italy, and Poland, together with several Latin American countries, were also considered attractive opportunities by US investors. By paying for imports and by investing overseas the US was able to send abroad a stream of dollars, which enabled other countries not only to import more goods but also to service their international debts. The fact that a high proportion of the borrowing was short term did not disturb the recipients ( Feinstein et al ., 1997 ).
The majority of the world’s economies were linked to each other by the gold standard, which had been suspended during the First World War, but its restoration was considered a priority by virtually all the major economic powers. It is easy to understand the appeal of the gold standard to contemporaries. The frightening inflations after 1918 and the severe deflation of 1920–1 made policy-makers yearn for a system that would provide international economic and financial stability. To policy-makers the gold standard represented a state of normality for international monetary relations; support for it was a continuation of the mindset that had become firmly established in the late nineteenth century ( Eichengreen and Temin, 2010 ). There was a widespread belief that the rules of the gold standard had imposed order within a framework of economic expansion during the 40 years before 1914 and order was certainly required in the post-war world. In particular, contemporaries believed that the discipline of the gold standard would curb excessive public spending by politicians who would fear the subsequent loss of bullion, an inevitable consequence of their profligacy. Unfortunately, the return to gold was accomplished in an uncoordinated fashion. Several countries (e.g. Belgium and France) adopted exchange rates that were not only significantly below their 1913 levels, but also provided a significant competitive advantage.
The reverse was true for the UK, which, in 1925, returned to gold at the 1913 exchange rate after a deflationary squeeze had made this possible. In general, financiers and bankers supported the return to gold at the pre-war exchange rate, but, as a result, sterling was overvalued and Britain’s export industries were disadvantaged. The achievement of international competitiveness through deflation was the dominant force determining domestic economic policy during the 1920s. Unfortunately, UK exports suffered from war-induced disruption. Markets which had been readily exploited before 1914 offered much reduced opportunities after 1918. UK difficulties would have been more manageable if the bulk of Britain’s exports had been in categories that were expanding rapidly in world markets. Unfortunately coal, cotton and woollen textiles, and shipbuilding faced severe international competition. Over-capacity led to high and persistent structural unemployment in the regions where these industries were dominant. During the 1920s, UK unemployment was double the pre-1913 level and also higher than in all the other major economic powers. On average, each year between 1923 and 1929, almost 10 per cent of the UK insured workforce was unemployed. The jobless were concentrated in the export-oriented staple industries. In those parts of the economy not exposed to foreign competition, unemployment was closer to pre-war levels.
A further problem for Britain, and many other countries too, was the uneven distribution of gold stocks. The US was gold rich throughout the 1920s, but, after the stabilization of the franc in 1926, the Bank of France began to sell its foreign exchange in order to purchase bullion ( Clarke, 1967 ). By 1929, the US and France had accumulated nearly 60 per cent of the world’s gold stock and their central banks sterilized much of their gold so that it did not inflate the money supply. In other words, both countries kept a high proportion of the world’s gold stock in their vaults and withdrawn from circulation. As a result, other countries were forced to deflate in order to compensate for a shortage of reserves. Unfortunately, the gold standard imposed penalties on countries which lost gold while the few which gained did so with impunity.
Gold shortages compelled UK policy-makers to impose relatively high interest rates in order to attract foreign funds—hot money—which bolstered the country’s inadequate bullion reserves. Unfortunately, potential domestic investors suffered as the real cost of credit rose. Nevertheless, as the membership of the gold standard club grew in the 1920s, policy-makers congratulated themselves that all major trading countries were bound together in a system that was dedicated to the maintenance of economic stability.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the international economy was in a potentially precarious position in 1929. Continuing prosperity was dependent upon the capacity of the US economy to absorb imports and to maintain a high level of international lending. If an economic crisis struck the US, how would the Federal Reserve deal with it? The Fed, created in 1913, was a relatively untested central bank. Would it act aggressively as lender of last resort if the banking system became stressed? Would its decentralized division into 12 regional reserve banks with monetary policy formulated by a seven-member Board demonstrate weakness or strength in fighting a depression? And, should a crisis materialize, would the gold standard’s rules force contracting economies to deflate, thus worsening their plight rather than providing a supportive international framework?
(ii) From boom to slump
In January 1928 the Federal Reserve ended several years of easy credit and embarked on a tight money policy. The Fed began a sale of government securities and gradually raised the discount rate from 3.5 to 5 per cent. The Fed was fully aware that a sudden rise in interest rates could be destabilizing for business and might bring a period of economic prosperity to an unhappy conclusion. To avoid this possibility, the monetary authorities aimed gently to deflate the worrying bubble on Wall Street by making bank borrowing for speculation progressively more expensive. Monetary policy-makers believed that by acting steadily rather than suddenly, speculation could be controlled without damaging legitimate business credit demands. It seemed a good idea at the time, but unfortunately this policy had serious unforeseen domestic and international repercussions. The new higher rates made more funds from non-bank sources available to the ever-rising stock market, and speculation actually increased. Many corporations used their large balances to fund broker’s loans, and investors who normally looked overseas found loans to Wall Street a more attractive option. Unfortunately, countries that had become dependent on US capital imports, for example, Germany, were suddenly deprived of an essential support for their fragile economies.
Adversely affected by Fed policies, the US economic boom reached a peak in August 1929 and after a few months of continuously poor corporate results the confidence of investors waned and eventually turned into the panic which became the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. After the stock-market collapse the Fed embarked on vigorous open-market operations and reduced interest rates. The Wall Street crash markedly diminished the wealth of stock holders and could well have adversely affected the optimism of consumers. But in late 1929 the market seemed to stabilize close to the level it had reached in early 1928. For several months it appeared that the US economy was recovering after a dramatic financial contraction. Overseas lending revived and interest rates throughout the world responded to the Fed’s monetary easing. Optimists saw no reason why vigorous economic expansion should not be renewed, as it had been in 1922.
The optimists were wrong. From the peak of the 1920s expansion in August 1929 to the trough in March 1933 output fell by 52 per cent, wholesale prices by 38 per cent, and real income by 35 per cent. Company profits, which had been 10 per cent of GNP in 1929, were negative in 1931 and also during the following year. The collapse in demand centred on consumption and investment which experienced unprecedented falls. Gross private domestic investment, measured in constant prices, had reached $16.2 billion in 1929; the 1933 total was only $0.3 billion. In 1926, gross expenditure on new private residential construction was $4,920m; in 1933 the figure had fallen to a paltry $290m. Consumer expenditure at constant prices fell from $79.0 billion in 1929 to $64.6 billion in 1933. Durables were especially affected; in 1929, 4.5m passenger vehicles rolled off assembly lines; in 1932, 1.1m cars were produced by a workforce that had been halved. Automobile manufacture and construction had been at the heart of the 1920s economic expansion but, as they fell, supporting industries tumbled, too. Inventories were run down, raw material purchases reduced to a minimum, and workers laid off. In particular, companies producing machinery, steel, glass, furniture, cement, and bricks faced a collapse in demand. The number of wage earners in manufacturing fell by 40 per cent, but many lucky enough to hang on to their jobs worked fewer hours and experienced pay cuts. The producers of non-durable goods, such as cigarettes, textiles, shoes, and clothing, faced more modest declines in output and employment.
The most dramatic price falls were in agriculture and a fall of 65 per cent in farm income was unsustainable for farm operators, especially if they were in debt. Unlike manufacturers, individual farms did not reduce output in response to low prices. Indeed, their reaction to economic distress was to produce more in a desperate attempt to raise total income. The result was the accumulation of stocks which further depressed prices. Nor could farmers lay off workers, as most only employed family members. As banks and other financial institutions foreclosed on farm mortgages, distress auctions caused so much local anger that the Governors of some states were obliged to suspend them. Farmers who were unable to pay their debts put pressure on the undercapitalized unit banks that served rural communities. As bank failures spread unease among depositors, the natural reaction of institutions was to engage in defensive banking. Loans were called in and lending, even for deserving cases, was curtailed; the banks gained liquidity by bankrupting many of their customers. Rural families were forced to reduce their purchases of manufactured goods, adding to urban unemployment. The bitter irony of starving industrial workers unable to buy food that farmers found too unprofitable to sell helped to undermine faith in the free-market economic system.
The slide from mid-1929 to spring 1933 was not smooth and continuous. Periodically, it seemed that the depression had bottomed out and recovery was under way. In spite of a destabilizing fall in consumption during 1930 ( Temin, 1976 ) it seemed possible that the economy would revive. This expectation was quashed by a wave of bank failures at the end of the year. Although mostly confined to small banks in the south east of the US, the failures gave depositors a warning sign. During the first half of 1931 the economy revived, but hopes were dashed in the aftermath of Britain’s abandonment of the gold standard in September, when a wave of bank failures served to undermine the diminishing faith of depositors who rushed to withdraw their money, thus making the closure of their banks inevitable. Many kept their withdrawn funds idle rather than trust another bank with their savings. Economic expansion in the summer and autumn of 1932 was reversed during the policy vacuum between Roosevelt’s electoral victory in November 1932 and his inauguration in March 1933. The uncertainties present during this ‘lame duck’ period led to a further wave of bank failures which became so serious that, by the time Roosevelt delivered his inaugural address in March 1933, the Governors of the vast majority of states had declared their banks closed to prevent almost certain failure ( Calomiris, 2010 , this issue). There was a sharp difference between the British experience, where no financial institution failed, and that of the US, where financial paralysis was the end result.
Friedman and Schwartz (1963) emphasized the contraction by one-third of the US money stock between 1929 and 1933, a reduction which they believe explains fully the severity of the depression. They accused the Federal Reserve of pursuing perverse monetary policies which transformed a recession into a major depression. It was, however, a combination of monetary and non-monetary causes, varying in intensity during these critical years, which accounts for the depth of this crisis (Gordon and Wilcox, 1981 ). Nevertheless, as Fishback (2010, this issue) shows, the judgement of the Fed was at times seriously flawed, although policy errors are sometimes more apparent with the benefit of hindsight. For example, because nominal interest rates had been reduced to a very low level, the Fed believed that it was pursuing an appropriate easy money policy. Indeed, it was difficult to see how interest rates could be forced lower. However, the monetary authorities failed to take account of the savage deflation which caused real interest rates to rise to punitive levels for borrowers. The central bank was convinced that it was pursuing an easy money policy when the reverse was the case. Moreover, when faced with a policy choice, the Fed always opted to follow the gold standard rule. As a result, during late 1931, and also during the winter of 1932–3, the Fed raised interest rates to protect the dollar from external speculation in order to halt gold losses. Unfortunately, this was the exact reverse of the low interest rate, easy credit policy needed to save the battered banking system. Little wonder that so many banks closed their doors. There is no doubt that monetary policy had serious adverse effects during the worst depression years.
Unemployment was one of the great curses of the depression. Widely accepted estimates show that the percentage of the US civilian labour force without work rose from 2.9 in 1929 to 22.9 in 1932 ( Table 2 ). Many classified as employed were on short time and some had also experienced wage cuts. Unlike Britain, the US had no national system of unemployment benefits; the jobless were subjected to a harsh regime which included dependence on miserly, poorly administered, local relief. Those most affected included the young, the old, and ethnic minorities, whose unemployment rates were relatively high. In addition, social workers stressed that those who had been out of work for long periods became increasingly unattractive to employers. Loss of income and employment uncertainty combined to reduce consumer spending.
Even fortunates who felt secure in their jobs and whose real incomes had risen were deterred by the persistent deflation. Why buy a motor vehicle, or a house, now, when both would be significantly cheaper in a few months’ time? Deflation increased the burden of existing debt and acted as a warning against the accumulation of new obligations. Deflation also intensified business uncertainty and further undermined the confidence necessary to make investment decisions. Traditionally, price falls were seen as one of the natural self-correcting mechanisms of the market economy. Deflation automatically led to a rise in real incomes, it was argued, and consumers would soon start a purchasing drive that would lift the economy out of recession. The persistent price falls over such a long period, however, brought about a paralysis in consumption and investment. Potential spenders wanted to wait until the price falls had reached their nadir before they committed themselves to major purchases and new debt.
Herbert Hoover was hard-working, energetic, and intelligent. He probably had a greater grasp of contemporary economics than any twentieth-century president and was confident enough to be his own economic advisor ( Stein, 1988 ). He was familiar with the current literature on business cycles and was not a man to stand aside and watch as recession accelerated into depression ( Bernstein, 2001 ). Hoover publicly urged business leaders to share scarce work rather than add to the unemployed, and pleaded with them not to cut wage rates, which had been the instant response of employers in 1920–1. Big business held out against wage cuts until mid-1931 when, faced with overwhelming financial losses, the dam broke and they could resist no more. Nominal wage cuts became common, as did mass lay-offs. Some critics see Hoover’s unwavering commitment to high wages and the maintenance of purchasing power as a serious mistake, which added to the severity of the downturn ( Ohanian, 2009 ; Smiley, 2002 ).
Hoover refused to listen to the pleas of 1,038 American economists who, in 1930, urged him to veto the Smoot–Hawley tariff bill. When it became law, this legislation raised US import duties and ultimately led to retaliatory action throughout the world. Not surprisingly, US foreign trade declined once the depression began to bite. The value of US exports was $7 billion in 1929 but only $2.5 billion in 1932; imports declined from $5.9 billion to $2 billion during the same period. Nevertheless, the US balance of payments remained in surplus. It was, however, the rapid income decline in countries that wanted to purchase US goods which was the most significant factor in causing the contraction in international trade ( Irwin, 1998 ). Hoover’s support of tariff increases demonstrated his consistency. His priority was to protect companies that paid high wages from competition from cheap imported goods ( Vedder and Gallaway, 1993 ).
In early 1932, following Hoover’s lead, Congress approved the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) with a remit to lend to distressed banks. The hope that the RFC, acting as lender of last resort, would bring stability to the financial system was compromised by a Congressional decision to publicize the names of all institutions that approached the RFC for financial help. Hoover also authorized a large increase in federal spending on work relief projects, but the federal budget, at 4 per cent of GNP, was too small to make a noticeable dent in the growing social distress. Inevitably, declining revenue forced the budget into deficit for fiscal year 1931. The deficit was too small to exert an expansionary effect on the economy but it did enable Roosevelt to attack Hoover during the election campaign of 1932 for failing to appreciate the necessity of economy in government. Ironically, the budget deficit of 1931 was the most expansionary of the entire decade, though no one at the time saw this as a benefit. In 1932, Hoover became so concerned about the domestic and foreign disapproval of the federal budget deficit that spending was reduced and the Revenue Act (1932) introduced a raft of substantial tax increases. In spite of his efforts, the budget remained in the red and, not surprisingly, unemployment remained stubbornly high. Unfortunately, Hoover’s understanding of contemporary economics led him to an unshakeable belief in the gold standard. He shared with many contemporary economists the view that fiscal and monetary policies must be directed to support gold rather than directly to promote domestic economic expansion or bank stability.
(iii) The transmission of the depression
It is easy to see that the year-on-year reduction in imports by the main industrial powers and the collapse of international lending placed many economies in great difficulty. In particular, a regular flow of dollars had been crucial to debtor countries, enabling them to buy goods and services and discharge their debt payments. Once the flow dried up, countries had to confront balance-of-payment and debt-repayment problems which were entirely unanticipated. Primary producers had to act quickly to reduce imports and boost their exports as the terms of trade moved sharply against them. Desperate to curb gold and foreign-exchange loss, they used restrictive monetary and fiscal policies to deflate their economies savagely. Public spending was slashed, wages were cut, and misery increased, but all to no avail. It was impossible to earn sufficient foreign currency, or to attract new international loans. Once the cure of deflation was judged more painful than the disease it was supposed to remedy, default on international loans was inevitable. When this happened, foreign investors panicked. In 1931, US lending virtually ceased and did not recover during the rest of the decade.
The key element in the transmission of the Great Depression, the mechanism that linked the economies of the world together in this downward spiral, was the gold standard. It is generally accepted that adherence to fixed exchange rates was the key element in explaining the timing and the differential severity of the crisis. Monetary and fiscal policies were used to defend the gold standard and not to arrest declining output and rising unemployment.
Contemporaries believed that the gold standard imposed discipline on all economies wedded to the system. But in operation the gold standard was not even-handed. As we have seen, states accumulating gold were not forced to inflate their currencies, but when gold losses occurred governments and central banks were expected to take immediate action in order to stem the flow. The action was always deflation but never devaluation ( Temin, 1993 ). Between 1927 and 1932 France experienced a surge of gold accumulation which saw its share of world gold reserves increase from 7 to 27 per cent of the total. Since the gold inflow was effectively sterilized, the policies of the Bank of France created a shortage of reserves and put other countries under great deflationary pressure. Irwin (2010) concludes that, on an accounting basis, France was probably more responsible even than the US for the worldwide deflation of 1929–33. He calculates that through their ‘gold hoarding’ policies the Federal Reserve and the Bank of France together directly accounted for half the 30 per cent fall in prices that occurred in 1930 and 1931. This illustrates a serious flaw in the operation of the interwar gold standard.
When US capital flows to Germany began to dry up in 1928, the German economy was already experiencing an economic downturn and, at the same time, had a formidable reparations debt to discharge. Germany was forced to deflate, even though already in the early stages of a depression. Soon mounting unemployment and violent political unrest gripped the country. In May 1931 Austria’s largest bank, the Credit-Anstalt, experienced such difficulty that speculators attacked the Austrian schilling. Austria’s gold and foreign-exchange reserves were inadequate and soon exhausted and the country was forced to introduce exchange controls. Speculators then turned to Germany, which had a weak economy, a suspect banking system, a high level of short-term debt, and worrying political divisions.
This was an opportunity for decisive coordinated intervention by the major economic powers. A flawed German economy faced the possibility of a catastrophic financial crisis, which, if not contained, could have serious ramifications for others. Who among the great powers would help? Britain was too financially enfeebled to offer more than marginal assistance. In June 1931 President Hoover acted by unilaterally proposing a moratorium, for 1 year, on reparation and war debts payments. The moratorium referred only to inter-government debt. Hoover expected private debts to be honoured. His intervention was opposed by the French, who were furious at the lack of consultation but more fundamentally believed that they lost more than they gained from the moratorium. France, with ample gold reserves, was in a position to assist, but the political conditions attached to its offer of help made it impossible for Germany to accept. In August 1931, Germany abandoned the gold standard, introduced exchange controls, and halted the free flow of gold and marks. Even though this was a time of falling prices, the horrors of post-war hyperinflation were fresh in the memory of the German public and policy-makers. As a result, the mark was not devalued and the government continued with the draconian deflation that had been introduced in accordance with gold-standard rules.
The speculative wave then engulfed sterling. There had been obvious signs of recession in the UK as early as 1928, when the curtailment of US lending affected UK international trade in services. About 40 per cent of UK overseas trade was with primary producing countries, which were forced immediately to restrict their spending when US credit dried up ( Solomou, 1996 ). The crisis worsened in 1929 as world demand collapsed and the UK experienced a sharp fall in the export of goods and services. Following gold-standard rules, real interest rates rose to defend sterling and public-expenditure cuts were imposed in an attempt to achieve budget balance. Like Austria and Germany, Britain was faced with the withdrawal of foreign deposits as the holders of sterling anticipated the potential loss to them from devaluation. The struggle to defend the pound was all to no avail. On 21 September Britain was forced to leave the gold standard, the first major country to do so, and devalue sterling. The devaluation was substantial; sterling, once free to float, fell by 25 per cent against the dollar, though, of course, it is the multilateral effects of devaluation rather than the bilateral which are the most significant. Speculators then attacked the US dollar, which, as we have seen, was defended by the Federal Reserve, though at the cost of compromising the banking system and intensifying an already serious depression.
Curiously, once free from the need to pursue a deflationary monetary policy to defend sterling, the Bank of England actually increased the bank rate. In spite of experiencing one of the largest price falls in modern history, policy-makers worried about the inflationary effects of devaluation. Fortunately, Britain had not lived through the horrors of hyperinflation, or, indeed, the high levels of inflation endured by the French before the stabilization of the franc in 1926. The fears of financial instability quickly subsided and from early 1932 interest rates were reduced and a nominal interest rate of 2 per cent was a persistent feature of the British economy for the remainder of the 1930s. In contrast, fiscal policy was not expansionary until the end of the decade and the attraction of an annual balanced budget remained ( Middleton, 2010 , this issue).
It is clear that unemployment was the major effect of the Great Depression as far as the UK is concerned. The proportion of workers who were unemployed rose to a peak of 17 per cent in 1932 ( Table 2 ). However, other indicators show that the impact of the crisis was relatively benign. No British bank or building society failed during these troubled years. Between 1929 and 1931, the peak-to-trough contraction in real GDP was a mere 5.4 per cent ( Table 2 ). Even in these crisis years, consumption remained relatively stable. The early exit from the gold standard and the robustness of the financial system created a platform for UK recovery which could be exploited. Indeed, between 1929 and 1937, the peak of 1930s performance, real GDP increased by 16.4 per cent. Unfortunately, 10.1 per cent of the insured population remained without work in 1938 and the numbers of long-tern unemployed were seemingly an intractable socio-economic problem ( Hatton and Thomas, 2010 , this issue). Nevertheless, the UK depression experience is a sharp contrast with that endured by the US ( Table 2 ). Even today, no US macro textbook would be complete without a section analysing the causes and the course of the Great Depression. In the UK, apart from persistent unemployment, the downturn was not deep and was over quickly, and the recovery was impressive.
However, 1931 was a watershed for UK economic policy. The gold standard was abandoned and sterling was devalued. Monetary policy was freed from its obligation to support the gold standard and could be used as a tool for economic expansion. The crisis also provided the incentive for Britain to turn away from an emotional commitment to free trade. The Imports Duties Act (1932) imposed a general 10 per cent duty on a range of imports. Within a few months, the Imperial Preference system instituted agreements between Commonwealth countries and Britain to favour each other’s exports.
Early UK recovery was helped by a favourable exchange rate, though within a few years that significant advantage had gone, as other countries devalued and as British tariffs improved the domestic trade balance. It was not foreign trade but a reflationary monetary policy that drove recovery. Cheap money stimulated the housing industry and, with building societies playing a promotional role, this sector became a visible sign of prosperity, particularly in the Midlands and the south-east of England. Unfortunately, the regions dominated by the old staple industries remained depressed. Apart from unemployment, UK macro performance during the recovery period was impressive. Between 1932 and 1937, GDP growth averaged 4 per cent ( Table 2 ).
In 1931, 47 countries were members of the gold-standard club. By the end of 1932 the only significant members were: Belgium, France, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and the US ( Eichengreen, 1992 ). The year 1931 was a dramatic one, when a major financial crisis dealt a mortal blow to the gold standard while output and prices continued to decline throughout the world. Far from providing stability and fulfilling the expectations of its supporters, the gold standard was instrumental in forcing economies to deflate during a period of intense depression. Indeed, departure from gold was a prerequisite for recovery.
For a while the countries freed from the shackles of gold seemed overwhelmed by the enormity of their action. Policy-makers were concerned that devaluation might lead to inflation, so there was no immediate rush for expansionary economic policies. However, by 1935 it was clear that all the countries that had devalued their currencies in 1931 had performed far better than those who had opted for exchange control. In 1933, the US decided to leave the gold standard and devalue the dollar as it was clear that New Deal policies designed to inflate the economy were inconsistent with the rules of the game. Unlike Britain, the US was not forced to leave the gold standard but chose to do so. The performance of the gold bloc, headed by France, was increasingly dismal and in 1936 France, too, abandoned gold.
Devalued currencies gave exports a competitive edge which trade rivals remaining on gold sought to blunt by the imposition of tariffs, quotas, and bi-lateral trade agreements ( Eichengreen and Irwin, 2009 ). In Nazi Germany, a drive for greater self-sufficiency was added to strict exchange controls and these policies were accompanied by a reliance on bilateral rather than multilateral trade ( Obstfeld and Taylor, 1998 ). Japan and Italy also provide examples of autarkic imperialism. Liberal internationalism was no more. Individual countries, or groups, strove to minimize their imports and maximize their exports. Trade restrictions increased dramatically during the 1930s but even when there was some relaxation it was not multinational. With the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (1934), the US Congress authorized the President to negotiate bilateral tariff reductions with other countries. By 1939 the US had signed 20 treaties with countries accounting for 60 per cent of its trade ( Findlay and O’Rourke, 2007 ). Unfortunately, during the 1930s, multilateral trade gave way to bilateral arrangements as trading within blocs, of which Imperial Preference was one, grew more common. The outcome was trade diversion rather than creation.
(iv) The post-gold-standard world
Roosevelt (FDR) promised the American people ‘bold persistent experimentation’ and, although scholars see in the New Deal continuity with America’s past, the public saw decisive action and lots of it. Immediately on entering office the new President addressed the banking problem. A bank holiday closed all the nation’s banks and the President assured the public that they would only be permitted to re-open when an independent examination had declared them sound. Roosevelt’s assurances, and a raft of new regulations designed to curb the failings which Congress believed had helped to cause the depression, ushered in a period of banking stability. FDR’s decision to leave the gold standard and significantly devalue the dollar horrified conservatives but banished the need for the Fed to impose deflationary policies on a stricken economy. Indeed, after devaluation, the US became a safe haven for gold, especially from a troubled Europe. The gold flows generated an expansion of the money supply which helped to stimulate recovery.
From the exceptionally low base of 1933, real GDP grew rapidly at an average of over 8 per cent a year until 1937. After a check, growth between 1938 and 1941 was, at over 10 per cent, even more rapid. Between 1929 and 1933 real GDP fell by 27 per cent; between 1933 and 1937 it rose by 36 per cent ( Table 2 ). In 1937, the best year of the decade, output had just reached 1929 levels and there were as many people at work as there had been in the prosperous year of 1929. Unfortunately the labour force had grown by 6m and the unemployment rate, at 14.3 per cent, remained unacceptably high. Private investment failed to revive satisfactorily. Total gross private domestic investment (current $) rose from $1.4 billion in 1933 to $11.8 billion in 1937. The figure for 1929 was $16.2 billion. The recession of 1937–8 was a sudden and devastating blow to an economy functioning far below full capacity. Private investment was driven down to $6.5 billion and full recovery was held back for several years. The economy did not reach its long-run trend until June 1942.
The New Deal is difficult to evaluate economically, partly because of its lack of consistency ( Fishback, 2007 ). In the first New Deal, 1933–5, Roosevelt attacked the surpluses which many commentators believed had dragged the economy down. Farmers were paid to reduce the acreage on which they grew specified crops in the hope that reduced output would increase farm income and, indeed, revive the entire economy. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) encouraged cooperating businesses to curb competition, which was seen as potentially destabilizing as it led to price reductions. Minimum wages and maximum hours were supposed to increase consumer spending power and help spread the available work. It was a misguided attempt to regenerate the economy by producing less. This bureaucratic nightmare was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.
FDR now abandoned the attempt to cooperate with business and advocated a more competitive society. He denounced the ‘economic royalists’, who, he maintained, were trying to thwart the will of the people by undermining his policies. In order to protect the vulnerable, who would be exposed to exploitation in this new competitive environment, the formation and growth of trades unions was promoted by the Labor Relations Act (1935), more popularly known as the Wagner Act. Roosevelt gained a stunning re-election victory in 1936 but by the following year the 1937-38 recession necessitated another change in direction. FDR, who had always disliked budget deficits, now came to accept that spending was a vital tool for recovery. Extra spending did bring about a revival.
The President’s frequent changes of direction are seen by his opponents as cynicism. His supporters praise him for pragmatism. It is hard to think of the twists and turns of New Deal policies having a uniformly positive effect on economic performance. On the positive side, the achievement of bank stability was an important plus, but Roosevelt’s poor relations with business and the administration’s inclination to balance increases in spending with new taxes did not create a favourable environment for private investment to flourish and negated the expansionary effects of federal spending.
The New Deal was not Keynesian. Neither fiscal nor monetary policy was used as a tool for economic revival. The reaction of many contemporaries to the problem of unemployment, for example, was to promote polices that would share work, promote high wages to aid purchasing power, remove married women from the workforce, and institute a compulsory age of retirement. Although the federal budget was in deficit for every year during Roosevelt’s presidency, these deficits were too small and unplanned to be described as Keynesian ( Fishback, 2010 ). The growing money stock did exert a positive influence, but its cause was the substantial flow of gold entering the banking system from troubled Europe rather than direct policy action by the Fed ( Romer, 1992 ). The inflow also imposed costs even though it provided advantages. The Fed became concerned at the potentially inflationary excess reserves held by member banks and, in 1936 and 1937, raised reserve requirements. The banks responded by reducing their lending. Coincident with this restriction, federal spending was reduced. The combination of restrictive monetary and fiscal policies plunged the economy into a serious yearlong downturn during which real GDP fell by 10 per cent and unemployment rose to 12.5 per cent. Fortunately, the recession bottomed out in May 1938, as both fiscal and monetary policy became expansionary. Recovery was rapid but prices continued to fall for another 2 years. This recession was a serious self-induced wound.
(v) Unemployment
Hatton and Thomas (2010) offer an explanation for the mass unemployment in both the US and the UK during the 1930s. Unemployment in the UK during the 1930s was similar to that of the 1920s. It was concentrated in the regions where the old staple industries, cotton textiles, coal mining, ship building, and iron and steel, dominated. However, in other parts of the country, a private housing boom, encouraged by low interest rates and rising real wages, created many jobs and there was employment growth, too, in the manufacture of consumer durables and in the service sector. By the mid-1930s, UK unemployment was primarily regional and structural.
In contrast, the US had enjoyed low unemployment during the 1920s. The stubborn refusal of unemployment to decline to pre-Depression levels as economic recovery got under way ensured that expenditure on relief was a new and major item in the federal budget. There were other differences between the 1920s and the 1930s. The Roosevelt administration encouraged the growth of trades unions and in the first New Deal, minimum wages and maximum hours raised both real wages and labour costs. Indeed, the support of both Hoover and Roosevelt for polices designed to prevent wage rates from falling helps to explain the extraordinary growth in money wages during a period of mass unemployment. The employed benefited, but real wages increased above market-clearing levels and, as a result, unemployment persisted.
Unlike British policy-makers, the New Dealers were totally opposed to ‘dole’ payments, which they feared would lead to a dependency culture. Instead, they stressed the benefits of work relief with a cash wage and hourly wage rates identical to those in the private sector. Hours worked were restricted so that take-home pay was not so munificent that private-sector work would be rejected if it was offered. Unfortunately, limited funding enabled only 40 per cent of workers eligible for work project placements to find employment on them. Rejected applicants were forced to accept relief from their counties, which was far less generous than that provided by Washington.
Mass unemployment was a worldwide phenomenon during the depression. Sweden, Denmark and Norway, like Britain, endured double-digit unemployment in both the 1920s and the 1930s ( Feinstein et al ., 1997 ). In Germany, the deflationary policies pursued even after the gold standard had been abandoned led to an unemployment total of 6m in 1933, roughly double that of the UK. The social and political distress in Germany, which played a significant part in the election of Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, was widely seen at the time as one of the unacceptable costs of unemployment. The eradication of unemployment was a Nazi priority and the new government acted swiftly by imposing a ‘new deal’ on Germany which was radically different from Roosevelt’s model. The Nazis abolished German trades unions and with them collective bargaining. A mass programme of public works financed by budget deficits was begun immediately. Industrial recovery emphasized the production of capital goods not consumer goods. Labour service, and the introduction of military conscription in 1935, helped to reduce the ranks of the jobless so that, in 1937, unemployment had been reduced to less than 2m. A striking feature of the labour market was the very modest growth in real wages which this totalitarian regime was able to control. When the market became tight and shortages appeared, there were no trades unions to help workers exploit their scarcity.
The contribution of Nazi work-creation schemes and the state’s ability to control wage growth explains why the decline of unemployment in Germany appeared a success story when compared to Roosevelt’s efforts in the US ( Temin, 1989 ). Depressed commentators in the free world wondered if the only way to eradicate unemployment was to embrace the policies of either Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. Neither option had great appeal. It was, however, preparation for war which sheltered Britain, France, and Germany from sharing the US experience during 1937–8. Expansionary fiscal policies sustained the European economies as they geared up for conflict and minimized the effects of this contraction.
(i) What caused the downturn?
Economic historians have traditionally viewed the large falls in real GDP that happened in the Great Depression as the result of large aggregate demand shocks. We think this is still appropriate and identify the main sources of these shocks. 1 However, the translation of adverse shifts in aggregate demand into an impact on output as well as the price level, implies that the aggregate supply curve was non-vertical and the reasons for this need to be explored. Moreover, it is now generally accepted that the shocks which started the downward spiral were greatly amplified by the financial crises which characterized the early 1930s. A further key aspect of the Great Depression is that recessionary impulses were not immediately countered by an effective policy response, and this also has to be explained. Here, a central role was played by the gold standard, the fixed exchange-rate system, of which all the major economies were members at the end of the 1920s.
The most important source of shocks to the world economy from the late 1920s onwards was the United States. This was not only because the collapse in output in the world’s largest economy was spectacular, but because other countries responded to deflationary changes in American monetary policy, notably at the end of the 1920s ( Eichengreen, 2004 ). At least since Friedman and Schwartz (1963) , monetary policy errors have been blamed by many economists; the M1 measure of the money supply fell by over 25 per cent between 1929 and 1933 and it is generally agreed that, notwithstanding the constraints of the gold standard, at least through early 1932, there was scope for the Federal Reserve to reverse this decline by an aggressive response. Instead, adhering to the real bills doctrine, it was believed that monetary policy was loose and expansionary policy was inappropriate, even though real interest rates were very high. More details can be found in the paper by Fishback (2010) .
Econometric analysis has supported the view that declines in the money supply tended to have negative effects on real output in the United States in the interwar period; however, the decline in output in the early 1930s was much bigger than would be predicted simply on the basis of the fall in M1 (Gordon and Wilcox, 1981 ). This might imply that there were other demand shocks working through autonomous falls in consumption and investment spending, as argued by Temin (1976) . A major additional factor was the spate of banking crises that engulfed the United States in the early 1930s when more than 9,000 banks failed (comprising about a seventh of total deposits).
In a seminal paper, Bernanke (1983) found that adding changes in deposits of failing banks to an equation to predict output based on money and price shocks substantially improved its predictive power. This should not be surprising since it is well known that systemic banking crises tend to be associated with large output losses ( Laeven and Valencia, 2008 ). Bernanke interpreted his result as an indication that bank failures implied a loss of services of financial intermediation, a ‘credit crunch’, in which output fell consequent on an adverse shift in the supply of loans. This claim, based on correlations at the macro level, has subsequently been strongly supported by micro-level research into bank behaviour ( Calomiris and Mason, 2003 a ; Calomiris and Wilson, 2004 ). So bank failures were an important channel for the transmission of monetary impulses to real-economy outcomes.
Friedman and Schwartz (1963) interpreted the bank failures as primarily a result of a ‘scramble for liquidity’ with the implication that, if the Federal Reserve had acted as a vigorous lender of last resort, they could largely have been averted, at least in 1930 and 1931. Bordo and Lane (2010, this issue) provide support for this view based on an econometric analysis using examiners’ reports on failed banks. That said, it is clear that the United States entered the 1930s with a weak financial system, under-capitalized and based on unit rather than branch banking, and that the probability that a bank would fail strongly reflected fundamentals and insolvency stemming from ex ante balance-sheet weakness rather than panic ( Calomiris and Mason, 2003 b ). It is also clear that high failure rates reflected weaknesses in regulation, notably in terms of capital adequacy, and prudential supervision, in particular because of inadequate standards at the state level; indeed, Mitchener (2007) estimated that the bank failure rate might have been halved had regulatory and supervisory practices across states improved by one standard deviation.
Obviously, a more resilient banking system would have coped better with the stress created by macroeconomic problems. The incorporation of a financial sector into a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the interwar American economy gives similar insights. Christiano et al . (2003) found that shocks that raise liquidity preference (reduce bank deposits relative to currency holdings) lower funds for investment and contribute to a non-neutral debt deflation, but that a monetary policy rule that responded to these money demand shocks could have limited the fall in real GDP in the early 1930s to only about 6 per cent.
Where does the Wall Street Crash fit into this story? To the person in the street, the collapse of stock-market prices is surely the iconic aspect of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones industrial index fell from 381 to 198 between the peak in early September and mid-November 1929, while from peak to the trough in 1932 about five-sixths was wiped off stock-market values. The crash in the autumn of 1929 included the infamous Black Thursday and Black Tuesday (24 and 29 October). In contrast, economists and economic historians have generally thought that the Wall Street Crash played at most a minor role in the downturn. In part, this is because the fundamental value of a share reflects the discounted present value of future earnings and is thus an endogenous variable. That said, share price indices exhibit ‘excess volatility’—they jump about much more than can be explained by an efficient markets hypothesis ( Shiller, 2003 )—and probably were quite a bit ‘too high’ ex ante in 1929. 2 So there is scope to think in terms of an exogenous shock to share prices. The question then is how much effect might this have had on the real economy. The answer is probably a small impact on consumption through wealth effects and postponement of durables as a response to increased uncertainty ( Romer, 1990 ). There is good evidence that increases in uncertainty affected investment quite significantly through increased risk premia, but, that said, this does not seem to result from discrete events such as the stock-market crash ( Ferderer and Zalewski, 1994 ). So, overall, the impact of the Wall Street Crash on the real American economy was very modest in comparison with that of monetary policy and banking crises.
In sum, the collapse in economic activity was the result of large shocks, both monetary and expenditure, to aggregate demand interacting with a fragile financial system so as to magnify the impact. Discretionary policy responses were, at best, too little, too late, while automatic stabilizers were very weak in an economy with a small federal budget together with low tax rates and transfer payments. Although nominal interest rates fell by several percentage points, ex post real interest rates rose steeply, while bank failures and declining asset prices delivered a credit crunch.
For the typical small open economy in the rest of the world, the big problem as the Depression took hold was being subjected to deflationary pressure as world output and prices fell while being severely constrained in making a policy response by membership of the gold standard. The concept of the macroeconomic trilemma tells us that such a country can only have two of a fixed exchange rate, capital mobility, and an independent monetary policy. This last was typically given up while the gold standard prevailed, although in the globalization backlash that ensued capital controls were very widely adopted. It follows that a monetary-policy response to the deflationary shocks needed to be coordinated across countries (thereby allowing interest-rate differentials to remain unchanged) but, as Wolf (2010) explains, international coordination was out of the question. Indeed, non-cooperative behaviour was the order of the day, epitomized by France’s accumulation and sterilization of gold reserves.
Besides having no control over monetary policy, staying on the gold standard required reductions in prices and money wages and entailed high real interest rates and increased the risk of a banking crisis as balance sheets deteriorated. The decision not to leave the gold standard was influenced by the strength of worries about loss of monetary discipline and the degree of pain in terms of price falls and devaluations by important trading partners ( Wolf, 2008 ). Banking crises were experienced in many countries and were associated with weaknesses in banking systems as well as the deflationary pressures which stressed them ( Grossman and Meissner, 2010 , this issue). Banking crises were bad for the real economy, and countries which went through them were exposed to much larger decreases in real output ( Bernanke and James, 1991 ).
It is implicit in this discussion that the aggregate supply curve is positively sloped rather than vertical so that aggregate demand shocks have output as well as price-level effects. This seems to be borne out by the evidence. Bernanke and Carey (1996) , in a careful panel-data econometric study, found both that there was an inverse relationship between real wages and output and that this reflected incomplete (and indeed quite sticky) nominal wage adjustment in the presence of aggregate demand shocks. It is not fully understood why wages were so sticky, but ‘new-Keynesian’ arguments may be relevant. In particular, there is evidence to support an ‘insider–outsider’ explanation. Consistent with this, for the United States, it has been shown that the delay in nominal wage cuts was most pronounced in industries where there was market power ( Hanes, 2000 ). However, the impact of President Hoover’s attempts to persuade employers to agree not to cut wages may have also delayed wage cuts ( O’Brien, 1989 ). 3
The volume of international trade fell dramatically during the Great Depression, both absolutely and relative to GDP, and the period is notable for a surge in protectionism following the Smoot–Hawley Tariff imposed by the United States in 1930. For the advanced countries, real GDP fell by 16.7 per cent between 1929 and 1932, but import volumes fell by 23.5 per cent ( Table 1 ). Grossman and Meissner (2010) review the reasons for the decline in trade in some detail. Obviously a major factor is the fall in world incomes, but increasing barriers to trade clearly played a very significant role; although estimates of their contribution are sensitive to methodology, it seems likely to have been at least 40 per cent, as estimated by Madsen (2001) .
The goals of protectionist policies were typically to safeguard employment, to improve the balance of payments, and to raise prices. Unlike today, there were no constraints from World Trade Organization (WTO) membership. Protectionism is usually thought of as the triumph of special-interest groups but, in this period, it may be more a substitute for a macroeconomic-policy response. For example, Eichengreen and Irwin (2009) found that, on average, tariffs were higher in countries that stayed on gold longer. It seems unlikely that protection generally had any major impact on GDP during the downturn, because with retaliation there were offsetting effects on imports and exports. Eichengreen (1989) estimated that Smoot–Hawley raised American GDP in the short run by about 1.6 per cent after allowing for retaliation and effects on income in the rest of the world.
(ii) What drove the recovery?
The decline in economic activity across the world came to an end in 1932–3, although there were substantial output gaps for a long time afterwards. Changes in economic policy played a major role in promoting economic recovery on the demand side and to some extent by inhibiting it on the supply side. In the United States, the inauguration of the Roosevelt administration in 1933 ushered in the New Deal and most countries left the gold standard and embarked on a new macroeconomic policy regime. There is a large literature that seeks to account for the role of policy in macroeconomic outcomes in the post-Depression years, but, as this section shows, there remains room for debate.
In the United States, recovery after 1933 can be characterized as strong but incomplete. In the 4 years 1933–7, real GDP rose by 36 per cent compared with a fall of 27 per cent in the previous 4 years, taking the level in 1937 back to about 5 per cent above that of 1929. Assuming trend growth at the pre-1929 rate, however, there was still an output gap of some 25 per cent. From 1933 the New Deal swung into action with its alphabet soup of public-spending initiatives. It is natural to assume that this represented a substantial Keynesian fiscal stimulus but, as has been known since the calculations of Brown (1956) and Peppers (1973) , this was not the case.
Fishback (2010) points out that the New Deal was largely financed by tax increases and notes that the direct effects of fiscal stimulus were, at most, a very small part of the recovery. The federal deficit in 1936 was about 5.5 per cent of GDP and between 1933 and 1936 the discretionary increase probably amounted to around half of this figure. So, fiscal policy was not really tried. Would it have worked? This turns on the value of the fiscal multiplier. In the circumstances of the mid-1930s, with interest rates at or near the lower bound, there are good reasons to believe that, for temporary government spending increases, fiscal multipliers should be a good deal higher with much less crowding out than in normal times ( Hall, 2009 ). Gordon and Krenn (2010) provide estimates of the fiscal multiplier based on a vector autoregression (VAR) analysis of the impact of government expenditure on preparations for the Second World War in 1940–1 which are 1.8 in 1940 falling to 0.8 by the end of 1941. However, as Fishback (2010) notes, there are few estimates of the fiscal multiplier during the New Deal; his own research at the state level suggests a range of 0.9 to 1.7—perhaps a bit below Hall’s best guess of 1.7 for similar conditions. In any event, this would make dealing with the output gap of 1933 a daunting task.
The New Deal was a package of measures, some of which, notably NIRA in 1933 and later the National Labor Relations Act, were intended to increase the bargaining power of workers vis-à-vis employers and to prevent nominal wage declines. Cole and Ohanian (2004) , in the RBC tradition, argue that the effect was to raise real wages and unemployment compared with competitive market outcomes and that this accounts for a significant part of the shortfall of output in 1937 relative to the pre-1929 trend. Hatton and Thomas (2010) review the evidence for this claim and conclude that the New Deal may well have raised the equilibrium level of unemployment considerably; they find that the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) was 12 percentage points higher in the American economy in the 1930s compared with the 1920s. So, it seems that the adverse supply-side impact of the New Deal probably outweighs any positive demand stimulus that it delivered.
Romer (1992) argued that the main stimulus to recovery in the United States was monetary policy, noting very rapid growth in the monetary base and M1 after 1933. This was driven by (largely unsterilized) gold inflows after the United States left the gold standard. M1 grew at nearly 10 per cent per year between 1933 and 1937 and Romer estimated that this was sufficient to raise real GDP in 1937 by about 25 per cent compared with what would have happened under normal monetary growth. She found a large reduction in real interest rates from 1933 and concluded that this had favourable impacts on investment spending. By implication, the positive effect of monetary policy on nominal GDP was a major reason why the federal debt-to-GDP ratio only went up from 16 per cent in 1929 to 44 per cent in 1939.
This account needs to be supplemented by explicitly considering how the United States escaped the liquidity trap, i.e. delivered monetary stimulus despite interest rates at the lower bound. The key here was ‘regime change’, as was originally stressed by Temin and Wigmore (1990) . They argue that leaving the gold standard was a clear signal that the deflationary period was over. Eggertsson (2008) , working with a standard DSGE model, built on this and provided some quantification. His argument is that Roosevelt’s actions on taking office, comprising leaving gold, announcing an objective of restoring the prices to pre-Depression levels, and implementing New Deal spending, amounted to a credible policy that delivered a major change in inflationary expectations which drove down real interest rates, matching the classic recipe for escape from the liquidity trap ( Svensson, 2003 ). Eggertsson’s calibration implied that the regime change accounted for about three-quarters of the recovery in output between 1933 and 1937. Interestingly, this kind of model makes the New Deal a major factor in promoting recovery, but through its indirect effects in changing expectations rather than through a Keynesian fiscal stimulus.
An important ingredient in recovery in the United States was rehabilitation of the banking system to put an end to the waves of bank failures and to ease the credit crunch; this was, indeed, a major priority for legislators. Both re-capitalization and re-regulation of the banks were required. Following a compulsory closure of all banks for 3 days for inspection of their books, the Roosevelt Administration passed an Emergency Banking Act in March 1933 and this was followed by the Banking Acts of 1933 (Glass–Steagall) and of 1935. About 4,000 banks were declared insolvent and not allowed to re-open after the ‘bank holiday’. Inter alia , these banking acts empowered the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), a government agency, to buy preferred stock in banks with voting rights that frequently entailed effective control, introduced federal deposit insurance, separated investment from commercial banking, and imposed interest-rate ceilings on bank accounts (regulation Q). However, nationwide branch banking continued to be prohibited.
This approach was successful in part, as Mitchener and Mason (2010, this issue) discuss. Deposit insurance, made permanent under the auspices of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), was important in ending the threat of further bank runs, as theory suggests it should ( Diamond and Dybvig, 1983 ). The RFC provided substantial capital; by March 1934 it owned stock in nearly half of all commercial banks and in June 1935 it owned more than a third of the capital ($1.3 billion in 6,800 banks) of the American banking system ( Olson, 1988 ). The RFC imposed conditions on banks which were a good substitute for market discipline on risk taking ( Calomiris and Mason, 2003 c ) and the RFC made money for the American taxpayer. Bank runs ceased and failures returned to normal low levels; the deposits-to-currency ratio which had fallen from 10.9 to 5.1 between 1929 and 1933 went back above 7. Bank lending, however, remained far below pre-Depression levels and deposit-to-reserve ratios continued to fall from 13 in 1929, to 8.2 in 1933, to 5 in 1937, when loans were a little over half but bank capital was over 80 per cent of the 1929 level. This reflected continued efforts by banks to reduce default risk at a time when they found it costly to raise new equity ( Calomiris and Wilson, 2004 ).
The regulatory response to the banking crises, captured by political interest groups intent on preserving unit banking and imbued with the ideology of the real bills doctrine, was highly unsatisfactory ( Calomiris, 2010 ). 4 Calomiris notes that the legislation was designed to support unit banking, yet this was the main structural weakness of the system which inhibited diversification of risks, prevented coordinated responses to shocks, restricted competition, and was a major source of banking instability. In contrast, the Glass–Steagall Act mandated the separation of commercial and investment banking, whereas the evidence is that banks which did both were better diversified and less likely to fail ( White, 1986 ) and that there were no good investor-protection reasons for this legislation ( Kroszner and Rajan, 1994 ). In the longer term, the downside of deposit insurance in terms of encouragement of greater risk taking was an important concern but politically it was impossible to remove; this might be seen as a significant cost of the ineffectiveness of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort.
A key issue with macroeconomic policies to promote recovery is when to withdraw monetary and fiscal stimulus and revert to normal bank policy: too soon and a double-dip recession ensues, too late and inflation takes off. These ‘exit-strategy’ issues are considered by Mitchener and Mason (2010) . For the United States, the former problem materialized in 1937–8 when there was a short but severe recession in which real GDP fell by 10 per cent from peak to trough. This seems to have been consequent on a combination of monetary and fiscal policy tightening in which the former was probably more important ( Velde, 2009 ). This entailed a doubling of banks’ reserve requirements between August 1936 and May 1937, motivated by fear that excess reserves held by the banks might lead to a rapid rise in bank lending, together with the adoption of a policy to sterilize gold inflows as a result of which M1 growth stalled, and tax increases which saw the full-employment surplus rise by about 3.4 per cent of GDP ( Peppers, 1973 ), motivated by moves to re-balance the federal budget in the face of increases in the public debt-to-GDP ratio.
For countries in the rest of the world, a key factor in recovery was exit from the gold standard, as would be expected on the basis of the earlier discussion. On average, the earlier this happened the shallower was the downturn and the sooner recovery began, as was first shown in a very influential paper by Eichengreen and Sachs (1985) and has subsequently been confirmed for wider samples of advanced and middle-income countries by Bernanke (1995) and Campa (1990) . Bernanke (1995) points to leaving gold as permitting monetary expansion and leading to big declines in real interest rates.
In principle, going off gold also allowed countries with balance-of-payments deficits to escape from the deflationary pressures on fiscal policy that, with sterilization of monetary inflows in surplus economies, bore heavily as they tried to prevent a currency crisis ( Eichengreen and Temin, 2010 ). This might have allowed temporary fiscal stimulus to promote recovery but, as Wolf (2010) explains, for a variety of reasons including continued fear of inflation, many countries were reluctant to follow this path in the first half of the 1930s. Would the injection of fiscal stimulus have been successful? Almunia et al . (2010) obtain results that suggest it might well have been, given near liquidity trap conditions, and believe that there were positive results based on sizeable multipliers where it was employed, as in late-1930s France and Italy.
In similar vein, it should be noted that sovereign default was good for relatively rapid and strong recovery ( Eichengreen and Portes, 1990 ). Continuing to service debt as nominal GDP fell implied severe fiscal austerity and, not surprisingly, default was widespread both in Europe and Latin America in an era when the creditors were typically private bondholders, rather than banks, and creditor governments took a relatively relaxed attitude. 5
These themes can be further illustrated by considering economic recovery in the UK which is covered in some detail in Middleton (2010) . Compared with the United States, the UK experienced a relatively mild downturn, with real GDP falling by only about 5 per cent and an early recovery with real GDP returning to the 1929 level by 1934. 6 This fits the picture. The UK had a concentrated banking system but no universal banking and there were no bank failures. An early exit from the gold standard in September 1931 was a blessing in disguise and the result of a currency crisis driven by the fear that rising unemployment in an economy hard hit by falling exports was incompatible with continuation of deflationary policies ( Eichengreen and Jeanne, 1998 ). Devaluation permitted a ‘cheap-money’ policy together with a significant gain in competitiveness, and this accounts for much of the early recovery which started in a period of fiscal consolidation ( Broadberry, 1986 ). The UK did not default but, in 1932, achieved a significant reduction in debt-interest payments through conversion of a large war loan into lower-interest bonds. Unlike the United States, fiscal policy eventually played a significant part through the rearmament programme associated with a discretionary fiscal stimulus of about 3 per cent of GDP between 1935 and 1938; the evidence suggests a short-run fiscal multiplier of around 1.5 ( Thomas, 1983 ; Dimsdale and Horsewood, 1995 ).
(iii) What were the long-term implications of the Great Depression?
The Great Depression had long-lasting effects on economic policy and performance. In the UK it can be seen as a major step down ‘the road to 1945’ and the favourable reception in the 1940s and 1950s to the ideas of Beveridge and Keynes, while in the United States there is a widely held belief that it was the ‘defining moment’ in the development of the American economy ( Bordo et al ., 1998 ). Obviously, there is a danger of attributing to the Depression changes which would have come about anyway, but there is no doubt that the failures of the market economy in the 1930s were game-changing.
Clearly, one implication was a major re-thinking of macroeconomics by the economics profession which, in the Anglo-American world, rapidly adopted Keynesian thinking. This had implications for policy-making, although these need to be handled with care. In the United States, the main change was that it became generally accepted that the automatic stabilizers would not be over-ridden in pursuit of a balanced budget, and these were now much more powerful, with federal spending considerably bigger, but there was no move to trying to fine-tune the economy through Keynesian demand management ( De Long, 1998 ). In the UK, after the war, activist government intervention to prevent shortfalls of aggregate demand did become the norm and, by the 1950s and 1960s, short-term demand management was very prominent in a way that would have been unthinkable in the early 1930s. 7
There was also a legacy from the 1930s for the framework of macroeconomic policy in terms of the macroeconomic trilemma. The move to controls on international capital movements proved to be long-lasting; in most countries, they continued throughout the Bretton Woods period with the return to pegged exchange rates and freer international trade. These years were characterized by very small current-account positions, very high correlations of domestic savings and investment, and the insulation of domestic from foreign interest rates, thus allowing independent monetary policy ( Obstfeld and Taylor, 2004 ). This has been portrayed by Rodrik (2002) as the ‘Bretton Woods Compromise’ in terms of the acceptable limits on globalization required by domestic politics at the level of the nation state after the debacle of the 1930s.
The crisis of the 1930s surely also contributed to the massive increase in social transfers that characterized the OECD countries in the 50 years from 1930 to 1980, during which time the median percentage of GDP rose from a strikingly low 1.66 to 20.09 per cent ( Lindert, 2004 ). Here, too, the story should not be over-simplified—many other factors played a role, including population ageing, trends in income distributions, and rising prosperity. Nevertheless, the ‘defining moment’ hypothesis for the United States is perhaps at its most persuasive in terms of federal social-insurance schemes; Wallis (2010, this issue) sees a fundamental change in terms of fiscal federalism as the New Deal succeeded in putting rules in place that underpinned the political acceptability of inter-state transfers.
The Great Depression also had big implications for microeconomic policy; Hannah and Temin (2010, this issue) suggest that the immediate impact can be seen as a serious retreat from the capitalist free market, with a new emphasis on government interventions to correct market failures. This implies a greater role for regulation and, in most OECD countries, for state ownership. The short-term implication was undoubtedly a substantial reduction in the extent of competition in product markets, including the rise of cartels encouraged by government and the anti-competitive effects of protectionism. The weakening of competition turned out to be much more pervasive and long-lasting in the UK than in the United States ( Broadberry and Crafts, 1992 ; Shepherd, 1981 ).
It is well known that financial crises can have permanent adverse effects on the level and possibly also the trend growth rate of potential output and this is a major reason why such crises usually have serious fiscal implications, including big increases in structural deficits as a percentage of GDP. Thinking in terms of a production function, there will be direct adverse effects on the amount of capital as investment is interrupted, on the amount of labour inputs through hysteresis effects, and on TFP if R&D is cut back. Indirect effects—either positive or negative—may also be felt depending on the impact the crisis has on supply-side policy. Furceri and Mourougane (2009) estimate that for OECD countries a severe banking crisis reduces the level of potential output by about 4 per cent, while the review of the evidence in IMF (2009) , which covers lower-income economies, suggests 10 per cent; in neither case is long-run trend growth thought to be affected.
What does the experience of the United States in the 1930s reveal? One way to address the issue is through time-series econometrics where the shock in the 1930s has been a focal point in debates about deterministic or stochastic trends. 8 Here the evidence is rather inconclusive and the picture is muddied by the Second World War. In fact, assuming trend-stationarity and extrapolating the pre-1929 trend of per capita income growth into the long run gives quite a good approximation to actual experience, but a more careful look suggests a break in trend in 1929 comprising a levels decrease followed by a modest increase in trend growth through 1955 ( Ben-David et al ., 2003 ). The pre-1929 trend line was crossed in 1942.
More insight may be obtained by considering business-cycle peak-to-peak growth-accounting estimates, as in Table 3 . The obvious feature of the 1930s is that the financial crisis undermined growth in the capital stock. Had growth of the capital stock continued at the pre-1929 rate, by 1941 it would have been about 35 per cent larger and, accordingly, potential GDP perhaps 12 per cent bigger. Growth of labour inputs was sluggish, impaired by the impact of the New Deal. However, TFP growth was very strong, powered by sustained R&D, and Field (2003) labelled the 1930s the most technologically progressive decade of the twentieth century in the United States. This theme is pursued in Hannah and Temin (2010) .
Growth accounting decompositions, United States 1919–41 (% per year)
. | / . | / . | / . | / . | / )/( ) . |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1919–29 | 3.08 | 2.69 | 1.10 | 1.44 | 1.96 |
1929–41 | 2.52 | 0.04 | 0.27 | 2.03 | 2.25 |
1919–29 | 4.06 | 2.93 | 1.73 | 2.04 | 2.30 |
1929–41 | 2.36 | –0.14 | –0.02 | 2.34 | 2.38 |
. | / . | / . | / . | / . | / )/( ) . |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1919–29 | 3.08 | 2.69 | 1.10 | 1.44 | 1.96 |
1929–41 | 2.52 | 0.04 | 0.27 | 2.03 | 2.25 |
1919–29 | 4.06 | 2.93 | 1.73 | 2.04 | 2.30 |
1929–41 | 2.36 | –0.14 | –0.02 | 2.34 | 2.38 |
Notes : Δ A / A is TFP growth derived by imposing an aggregate Cobb–Douglas production function, Y = AK α L 1–α . L is measured in terms of hours worked.
Source : Derived from Kendrick (1961) .
A legacy of the depression was a large rise in the number of long-term unemployed workers and the share of unemployment which was long term. In the UK this was to a large extent the result of job losses in the traditional export industries interacting with the unemployment-insurance system to generate a group of workers who would have liked their old jobs back but could survive on the dole. These long-term unemployed workers seem to have experienced declining re-employment probabilities over time as they became discouraged, their human capital deteriorated, and employers regarded them as damaged goods ( Crafts, 1987 ). The plight of these workers scarred the period and, virtually excluded from the labour market, they did not hold down wage pressures ( Crafts, 1989 ). So, at any level of unemployment, wage pressure was greater than in the 1920s or, equivalently, hysteresis effects had raised the NAIRU—perhaps by about 1.5 percentage points.
The UK did not experience a banking crisis but its supply-side policy was greatly affected by the response to the shocks of the 1930s and the damage limitation of the period had persistent effects well into the post-war period. Booth (1987) pointed to the logic of the so-called ‘managed-economy approach’ that was adopted—namely, that it cohered in terms of trying to promote an increase in prices relative to wages through a combination of devaluation, tariffs, and cartels. This amounted to a big reduction in product-market competition which took a long time fully to reverse. In the late 1950s, tariffs were still at mid-1930s levels and about 60 per cent of manufacturing output was cartelized. The retreat from competition had adverse effects on productivity performance over several decades and provided the context in which industrial relations problems and sleepy management proliferated ( Broadberry and Crafts, 2011 ).
Finally, it should be noted that international trade did not return to pre-Depression levels until well after the Second World War. As of the late 1930s, it looked as though the increase in trade costs in the 1930s had ‘permanently’ reduced total trade (exports + imports) to income ratios by about 30 per cent for the advanced countries. Using modern research on the impact of trade on the level of income which allows for impacts on capital stock and TFP (rather than welfare triangles), following in the tradition of Frankel and Romer (1999) , suggests that the long-term effect would have been to reduce the level of GDP per person by about 15 per cent. 9
This section pulls out the strongest policy lessons from the 1930s that have emerged from the above. Some of these are well understood and, fortunately, in the Great Recession of the last 2 years many of the worst mistakes of 80 years ago have not been repeated. The economic history of the Great Depression is, of course, well known to key players such as Ben Bernanke and Christina Romer, who are distinguished contributors to the literature. We are, of course, aware that some things are different now—for example, there was no European Monetary Union or too-big-to-fail doctrine in the 1930s— and that policy decisions and outcomes were contingent on the circumstances of the time; nevertheless, we believe that there is value in re-visiting the experience of that decade.
Starting with monetary and fiscal policy, the headlines from the American experience are clear enough. Monetary policy bears a big responsibility for the early-1930s slump; subsequent research has refined rather than refuted the claims of Friedman and Schwartz (1963) . Monetary policy errors were of both commission and omission. Inappropriate tightening of policy precipitated the downturn, while the subsequent failure to provide greater monetary stimulus allowed recession to develop into depression. In particular, as Bordo and Lane (2010) show, the Federal Reserve failed in its role as lender of last resort and thus made the financial crisis much more serious. These mistakes were not repeated in 2008–9 when monetary policy was aggressively expansionary ( Wheelock, 2010 ).
In the 1930s recovery, by contrast, monetary growth provided a major impetus, while there was virtually no fiscal stimulus, even though it is reasonable to suppose that the fiscal multiplier was quite big. It is important not to be misled by the frenetic activity of the New Deal; fiscal policy did not fail, rather it was not tried. It should also be recognized that a strong recovery was rudely interrupted by the severe recession of 1937–8 and this seems to be explained by deflationary moves in both monetary and fiscal policy.
The British fiscal-policy experience offers rather different messages. In the rearmament phase of the later 1930s, fiscal stimulus had a substantial positive impact on real output. On the other hand, in the crisis at the start of the decade, attempts to prevent the budget deficit rising as the recession deepened reduced aggregate demand appreciably, with the structural deficit being reduced by over 2.5 per cent of GDP ( Middleton, 1985 ). The big difference compared with the present day is that the government attempted to over-ride the automatic stabilizers. 10 The context, in terms of the very unpleasant budgetary arithmetic arising from wartime borrowing and being on the gold standard, is important. 11 This drastically reduced freedom to manoeuvre in the face of fears of an adverse reaction from financial markets and of deflation. The lessons here are that falling prices greatly magnify worries about fiscal sustainability, and that, at times when fiscal policy is a valuable weapon, it is highly advantageous to enter the crisis with a history of fiscal prudence.
The experience of the 1930s tells us to expect that a legacy of the current crisis will be a substantial increase in long-term unemployment and economic inactivity. It seems clear that once again this will imply that the NAIRU goes up and the level of potential output goes down. The analysis in Guichard and Rusticelli (2010) suggests that the average increase in NAIRU through hysteresis effects, both across the OECD as a whole and also in the UK, could be around 0.75 percentage points. The adverse impact on the well-being of those who become long-term unemployed will be severe and sustained ( Clark et al ., 2008 ). As Hatton and Thomas (2010) point out, this represents a major challenge for active labour-market policies.
There is a further major lesson from the recovery phase of the 1930s, namely, the importance of regime change for escaping the liquidity trap. Exit from the gold standard by the United States in 1933, together with New Deal policies, changed inflationary expectations and produced a dramatic fall in real interest rates. More generally, abandoning the gold-standard rule restored independence of monetary policy which was valuable for many countries in a world with no policy coordination and bedevilled by wage stickiness. Devaluation promoted early recovery and made fiscal consolidation much less painful. Here was a classic case where adhering to the wrong policy rule made things worse.
This obviously has resonance for current Eurozone problems and, especially, for Greece, which does not have readily available the classic 1930s escape route of devaluation. Eichengreen and Temin (2010) argue that it is virtually impossible for a country to impose capital controls and leave the Eurozone and that, as the failure of the interwar gold standard illustrates, successful fixed exchange-rate systems generally need to be managed in ways that share burdens of adjustment between surplus and deficit countries. Wolf (2010) sees the Eurozone crisis as reinforcing the need for binding fiscal rules together with a credible commitment to a permanent European Stabilization Mechanism to preclude the financial crisis that sovereign default would bring.
At the beginning of the current crisis, international trade collapsed and it was widely remarked that there was a chilling parallel with the trade-wars period of the early 1930s with its seriously adverse implications for income levels in the long term. Subsequently, research has found that the contribution of trade barriers to falling world-trade volumes in 2008–9 was very small, perhaps only 2 per cent ( Kee et al ., 2010 ), which is well below estimates of 40 per cent or more in the Great Depression. It seems that the structure of world trade has changed in ways that make volumes much more sensitive to demand shocks; the evidence is reviewed by Grossman and Meissner (2010) .
This raises the important question of why we have seen creeping rather than rampant protectionism this time. Research on the interwar period by Eichengreen and Irwin (2009) finds that protectionist policies were less likely to be adopted by countries which left the gold standard early, i.e. where there was more freedom to adopt expansionary monetary and fiscal policies. They argue that this makes protectionism much less likely now because the scope for a macroeconomic policy response is much greater.
Even so, another big difference from the 1930s may also be relevant, namely, that now we have the trade rules overseen by the WTO including bound tariff agreements. Evenett (2009) points out that these tariff bindings have held. Unfortunately, it is also true that there is a great deal of leeway for WTO-legal increases in trade barriers, partly because in many cases tariffs are well below bound levels and partly because anti-dumping is not well addressed by the rules. This underlines the importance of reducing the scope for governments legally to raise levels of protection and emphasizes that there could be real value from concluding the Doha Round ( Hoekman et al ., 2010 ).
Banking crises were at the heart of the Great Depression in the United States. That experience and the wider evidence base tells us that such crises are typically very expensive in terms of the depth and length of the downturns with which they are associated and the fiscal legacy that they bequeath through increased structural deficits and government debt-servicing ( Laeven and Valencia, 2008 ). The costs are greater when pre-crisis regulation and supervision are weak ( Ahrend et al ., 2009 ), as is borne out by the variance of bank failure rates across the states of the USA in the 1930s.
Microeconomic analysis incorporating implications of asymmetric information predicts that there is the potential for serious market failures in the banking sector with attendant risks of banking crises; for example, a bank run (a coordination failure) can happen even though agents are rational and banks are solvent ( Diamond and Dybvig, 1983 ). Moral hazard leading to excessive risk-taking which is rational for banks may compound this problem in the context of free-riding in monitoring by depositors. Banks’ lending decisions do not take into account the (potentially large) social costs of bank failures via the threat to financial stability that they entail.
As the catastrophic experience of the United States in the 1930s makes clear, the policy implication is that there is a need both for regulation to reduce the possibility of a crisis by curtailing excessive risk-taking and also for crisis-management measures to reduce the impact of any crisis ( Freixas, 2010 ). The latter might include deposit insurance together with a central bank that acts effectively as a lender of last resort. The former might just comprise regulation that improves the quality of publicly available information to facilitate market discipline of banks. In practice, however, deposit insurance tends to exacerbate moral hazard, especially if implicit full-insurance guarantees are given de facto when banks are deemed too big to fail. This makes strict regulation of bank behaviour, for example, in terms of capital-adequacy rules, or of the size and/or scope of banking activities imperative ( Bhattacharya et al ., 1998 ).
In 1929, the United States had a badly regulated and under-capitalized banking system, an inexperienced and incompetent lender of last resort, and no federal deposit insurance. At the end of the crisis, responses were made both in terms of prudential regulation and crisis management. In 1933, ending the waves of banking crises was both an economic and a political imperative. As today, reliance on market discipline appeared unrealistic. The lender of last resort had failed. So, the solution was deposit insurance plus regulatory reform, and the political attractions of the former meant that it would be a permanent feature of the American banking system ( Calomiris, 2010 ). Many other countries have followed down this path, a choice reinforced by the present crisis. For this solution to work effectively, it is crucial that regulation is well designed. The lesson from the 1930s is that it most probably will not be, because vested interests are likely to hijack the politics of regulatory design. In particular, it is clear that the Glass–Steagall Act introduced unjustified restrictions on universal banking while failing to address the real structural problem, namely, unit banking. Nevertheless, given the scope for, and potentially large costs of, market failure in banking together with the unavoidable presence of deposit insurance, in principle, tighter regulation to contain moral hazard was appropriate both then and now. 12
In late 2008, the Queen pertinently asked why no one had seen the crisis coming. A similar question would have been entirely appropriate in 1931. In some sense, such a lack of foresight represents a failure of economics but it is important to be clear what this comprises. As the research reviewed in this essay shows, economics has powerful tools that explain the reasons for and the consequences of financial crises, ex post . There is no great mystery about what went wrong in the United States in the early 1930s and, in principle, it is known how to prevent a repetition. Forecasting the course of the depression ex ante would, however, have been extremely difficult, then as now. Inter alia , it would have required detailed knowledge of bank balance sheets and a model of when banks would fail, together with an estimate of the impact of bank failures on economic activity, plus an ability to predict the Federal Reserve’s policy moves and when the United States would leave the gold standard.
The key point is surely the need to take banking crises seriously. Microeconomic analysis based on incentive structures in the presence of asymmetric information explains why these are likely to happen ( Dewatripont and Tirole, 1994 ), while economic history tells us that they have been quite frequent and often very costly (Reinhart and Rogoff, 2009 ). This suggests that there is a clear need to supplement conventional macroeconomic forecasting models with models for policy analysis and simulation which incorporate a financial intermediation sector with incentive distortions and information frictions ( Bean, 2010 ) and with ‘early-warning’ models that focus on threats to financial stability.
Unfortunately, the latter are still far from satisfactory. For example, the preferred model in Davis and Karim (2008) gave the probability of a banking crisis in the UK in 2007 as 0.6 per cent while Giannone et al . (2010) show that the recent financial crisis was more severe on average in countries which had very high-quality financial regulation according to existing indicators! Moreover, economists have not yet identified with any precision ex post the initial conditions which made for greater vulnerability ( Claessens et al ., 2010 ). The policy implication is to recognize that maintaining financial stability is a policy objective that will not be achieved by inflation targeting but requires additional policy instruments.
Finally, it is worth noting that in some very important ways economics has had a good crisis and lessons from the 1930s have been well heeded. Accepting that the financial crisis was allowed to happen and was not predicted, at least the policy response based on economic analysis and historical experience prevented a repeat of the trauma of the Great Depression.
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Until relatively recently, this was also commonplace among macroeconomists, even those of a strong neoclassical persuasion. Since Cole and Ohanian (1999) there have been attempts to explain the Great Depression in a real business cycle (RBC) framework. This would naturally look to adverse total factor productivity (TFP) shocks as the recessionary impulse; in common with most economic historians—for example, Pensieroso (2007) and Temin (2008) —we do not believe that this venture has been successful. The strong point of RBC modelling of the 1930s has been to point out and seek to quantify impacts of the New Deal on aggregate supply during the recovery phase ( Cole and Ohanian, 2004 ). Indeed, in that tradition the term ‘Great Depression’ is applied to the whole of the 1930s for the United States on the grounds that, despite quite a strong recovery after 1933, real GDP remained well below what would have been predicted on the basis of 1920s trend growth.
Whether there was a ‘bubble’ in the 1929 stock market has been controversial. The most persuasive evidence that there was a substantial bubble comes from the pricing of loans to stockbrokers and the valuation of closed-end mutual funds; see Rappoport and White (1993) and De Long and Shleifer (1991) .
Bordo et al . (2000) constructed a DSGE model incorporating overlapping Taylor-wage contracts and found that sluggish wage adjustment could have been a powerful aspect of the transmission mechanism from monetary shocks to real output effects.
The real bills doctrine held that the Federal Reserve should simply supply credit to meet the needs of trade and should not seek to target monetary growth or inflation; adherents believed in the separation of investment and commercial banking.
Eichengreen and Portes (1990) list 12 ‘heavy’ and 16 ‘light’ sovereign defaulters; the former include Germany and Greece and the latter include Canada, France, Italy, and Spain.
This raises the question as to why British folklore thinks the 1930s were so bad. The answer probably relates to regional trends in unemployment. In particular, adjustment to declines in the export-staple industries concentrated in ‘Outer Britain’ proved very difficult, cf. Hatton and Thomas (2010) . This is symbolized by the Jarrow March, which took its participants in 1936 from the depressed North-east to the prosperous South-east.
The initial stance of the Labour government in the late 1940s was to embrace planning rather than fine-tuning. It should also be noted that there has been a vigorous debate among economic historians about the validity of the concept of a ‘Keynesian revolution’ in British economic policy-making; see Booth (2001) for an introduction and further references.
With a stochastic trend, a shock only has a temporary effect and the economy then returns to the previous trend growth path; in contrast, if the trend is a non-stationary stochastic process, shocks have an enduring effect on the future growth path and long-run forecasts are affected by historical events.
This is based on the point estimate of an elasticity of 0.5 for the effect of trade exposure on income found for the period 1960–95 by Feyrer (2009) using an improved estimation technique. As far as we know, a similar study has not yet been performed for the interwar years. For the pre-1914 period, Jacks (2006) found larger elasticities based on the original Frankel–Romer methodology.
The large UK budget deficit in 2009–10 of about 11 per cent of GDP mainly results from the fiscal impact of the crisis on top of a pre-existing structural deficit of about 3 per cent of GDP; discretionary fiscal stimulus was equivalent to only about 1.5 per cent of GDP ( IFS, 2010 ). But the key point is that there was no attempt through fiscal stringency to stop the deficit from increasing, quite unlike 1931.
Using the standard formula that for fiscal sustainability b > d ( r – g ) where b is the primary surplus/GDP, r is the interest rate on government debt, and g is the growth rate of nominal GDP with the data set from Middleton (2010) , in the late 1920s, d = 1.7, r = 4.6, and g = 2.5; if inflation is zero then b = 3.6 per cent, but if prices fell at 5 per cent per year, b rose to 12.1 per cent. Conversion of the war debt and gently rising prices in the post-gold-standard world changed this so that b fell below 2 per cent. The value of b is quite small in each of these scenarios if d is at the 1913 level of 0.25.
The claim that there is a market-failure-based justification for stronger regulation is related to the special features of banking that create instability risks and clearly does not generalize to a case for state intervention across the board on the grounds that the market economy as a whole has failed. That error was commonplace in the 1930s but should not be repeated now. It should also be apparent that 1930s experience does not offer a blueprint for the optimal details of regulation in the different world of today.
Author notes
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The Great Depression and the New Deal Phenomenon Essay
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The Great Depression was a phenomenon that did significant damage to the American economy. Before that, the economy grew on an unseen scale under President Hoover, but the growth was marked by excess and inequity, which eventually caused the Wall Street Crash. Hoover, clinging to the laissez-faire policy, was completely unable to alleviate the depression; on the contrary, F. D. Roosevelt introduced numerous steps (which became known as “the New Deal”) and provided significant governmental assistance to the population, which allowed the country to recover from the depression.
The Great Depression came to the USA in October 1929, with the bloated stock market crash known as the Wall Street Crash. In the preceding years, the U.S. had experienced a major growth in its economy under the President Herbert Hoover, a Republican.
However, the growth was extremely intense. While the level of life of an average American increased significantly, the owners of businesses, especially large ones, benefited the most. With time, due to the highly unequal distribution of income, as well as to the depression in farming regions, the buying capacity of Americans decreased significantly; this led to the inability to purchase the goods present in the market. It meant that companies could no longer sell their products; the products accumulated in the markets, unsold.
The businesses also could not hire employees or pay them salaries, so the unemployment rose. Everything “exploded” with the Wall Street Crash; tremendous amounts of money were withdrawn from the banks, and the latter were not able to collect debts from stagnating European banks. Numerous investors were wiped out of the market, and many businesses went bankrupt, while the surviving ones introduced layoffs and salary cuts, deepening the depression further (Foner 800).
President Hoover response to the Depression was controversial. He listened to his advisers who stated that crises were a normal part of capitalism (which they are), and that people should “tighten the belt” so that the unproductive firms die out and the moral virtue among the poor is born in large quantities (which is a doubtful point of view, though it apparently does follow from the logic of capitalism).
It was not realized by the government that the lower and middle classes constituted a crucial part of the people’s buying capacity, and that without the “less fortunate” being able to earn money, the depression would be only likely to worsen. Hoover strongly opposed any governmental aid to the needy, and continued hoping that the situation would solve on its own, as a result of voluntary steps of the business.
The Republican Congress under Hoover took a number of unsuccessful attempts to resolve the situation (in 1932 such as increasing taxes, which only further reduced the buying power of Americans); finally, in 1932, Hoover admitted that his politics had failed, and took some steps to help businesses, but not the unemployed (Foner 802-803).
On the other hand, when Roosevelt won the election in 1933, he took numerous steps which were almost opposite to what Hoover proposed. Before the elections, he offered the Americans “a new deal”; even though the notion was vague at the time, his policy became known under that name.
FDR significantly changed the relationship between businesses and the government, limited the actions of banks, and introduced significant governmental help to the population. In the first 100 days of his rule, Roosevelt adopted a large number of laws and established various national agencies aimed at addressing the crisis (Foner 812-813).
Among the acts adopted by the Congress under FDR, there were AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act) and NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act). AAA provided subsidies for farmers for not planting crops on a part of their territory, and for killing excess domesticated animals, which would defeat the excess of the farming products in the markets and increase their price.
NIRA established NRA (the National Recovery Administration) which was to set standards “for output, prices, and working conditions,” so that “‘cutthroat competition’… would be ended”; still, corporations turned NRA to their advantage, so it did little to help the situation (Foner 813-814).
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was an agency that provided states with finances to run relief programs and create jobs. In March 1933, CCC (the Civilian Conservation Corps) was created to employ young men in projects such as forest preservation or improvement of nature reserves, which allowed them to earn at least some wages from the government.
In November, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) was established to provide temporary jobs (such as construction of roads, tunnels, etc.) to larger numbers of unemployed people to help them survive the winter. CWA, however, became too costly to the government, and was dismissed in spring 1934 (Foner 813-815).
In 1934, FDR decreased governmental employment for the needy. In 1935, however, he restored his politics. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established; it provided jobs for nearly 3 million people who built bridges and buildings, organized art projects, etc.; WPA worked until 1943 and provided help to great numbers of people who were in the desperate need of a job (Foner 825).
To sum up, it should be stressed that the Great Depression came to the U.S. as a result of the highly unequal distribution of income, which meant that the population, the main purchasing power of the people, could buy not nearly enough products from the market, so the goods were left unsold, and the production stopped.
While the Hoover’s laissez-faire policy proved impotent in fighting the crisis, Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which included numerous programs of social security, governmental jobs for the unemployed, etc., alleviated the situation and allowed the country to recover from the economic disaster.
Works Cited
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History . Vol. 2. 4th ed. 2013. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Print.
- Roaring 1920’s in the USA
- Frederick Douglass and His Incredible Life
- FDR Impacts on American Economy of New Deal
- FDR’s New Deal: Democratic Platform
- The Concept of Laissez-Faire Leadership Style
- American History From Reconstruction to World War I
- American Revolution: Reclaiming Rights and Powers
- Gilded Age and Progressive Era Freedom Challenges
- Women Status after the American Revolution
- Slavery and the Abolition of Slave Trade
- Chicago (A-D)
- Chicago (N-B)
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Library Research 101: Start Your Research
- Articles--what are they and where are they?
- Books--what are they and where are they?
- How do I choose a topic?
- How do I write a research question?
The thesis statement
- How do I cite?
- Glossary: Library terms
What is a thesis statement ?
- A thesis statement comes at the beginning of your paper.
- It is a statement that answers your research question.
- The statement is supported throughout your paper with examples and evidence.
What makes a good thesis statement?
- It takes a position, or advances an opinion.
- It is specific, not too broad, but not too narrow.
- It is an arguable statement; there is room for discussion or disagreement.
- It provides focus and generates interest in the reader.
Three Examples:
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ercise, combined with antidepressants, is more effective in reducing depression in older adults given the prevalence of treatment-resistant depression in late life.
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How to Write a Strong Thesis Statement: 4 Steps + Examples
What’s Covered:
What is the purpose of a thesis statement, writing a good thesis statement: 4 steps, common pitfalls to avoid, where to get your essay edited for free.
When you set out to write an essay, there has to be some kind of point to it, right? Otherwise, your essay would just be a big jumble of word salad that makes absolutely no sense. An essay needs a central point that ties into everything else. That main point is called a thesis statement, and it’s the core of any essay or research paper.
You may hear about Master degree candidates writing a thesis, and that is an entire paper–not to be confused with the thesis statement, which is typically one sentence that contains your paper’s focus.
Read on to learn more about thesis statements and how to write them. We’ve also included some solid examples for you to reference.
Typically the last sentence of your introductory paragraph, the thesis statement serves as the roadmap for your essay. When your reader gets to the thesis statement, they should have a clear outline of your main point, as well as the information you’ll be presenting in order to either prove or support your point.
The thesis statement should not be confused for a topic sentence , which is the first sentence of every paragraph in your essay. If you need help writing topic sentences, numerous resources are available. Topic sentences should go along with your thesis statement, though.
Since the thesis statement is the most important sentence of your entire essay or paper, it’s imperative that you get this part right. Otherwise, your paper will not have a good flow and will seem disjointed. That’s why it’s vital not to rush through developing one. It’s a methodical process with steps that you need to follow in order to create the best thesis statement possible.
Step 1: Decide what kind of paper you’re writing
When you’re assigned an essay, there are several different types you may get. Argumentative essays are designed to get the reader to agree with you on a topic. Informative or expository essays present information to the reader. Analytical essays offer up a point and then expand on it by analyzing relevant information. Thesis statements can look and sound different based on the type of paper you’re writing. For example:
- Argumentative: The United States needs a viable third political party to decrease bipartisanship, increase options, and help reduce corruption in government.
- Informative: The Libertarian party has thrown off elections before by gaining enough support in states to get on the ballot and by taking away crucial votes from candidates.
- Analytical: An analysis of past presidential elections shows that while third party votes may have been the minority, they did affect the outcome of the elections in 2020, 2016, and beyond.
Step 2: Figure out what point you want to make
Once you know what type of paper you’re writing, you then need to figure out the point you want to make with your thesis statement, and subsequently, your paper. In other words, you need to decide to answer a question about something, such as:
- What impact did reality TV have on American society?
- How has the musical Hamilton affected perception of American history?
- Why do I want to major in [chosen major here]?
If you have an argumentative essay, then you will be writing about an opinion. To make it easier, you may want to choose an opinion that you feel passionate about so that you’re writing about something that interests you. For example, if you have an interest in preserving the environment, you may want to choose a topic that relates to that.
If you’re writing your college essay and they ask why you want to attend that school, you may want to have a main point and back it up with information, something along the lines of:
“Attending Harvard University would benefit me both academically and professionally, as it would give me a strong knowledge base upon which to build my career, develop my network, and hopefully give me an advantage in my chosen field.”
Step 3: Determine what information you’ll use to back up your point
Once you have the point you want to make, you need to figure out how you plan to back it up throughout the rest of your essay. Without this information, it will be hard to either prove or argue the main point of your thesis statement. If you decide to write about the Hamilton example, you may decide to address any falsehoods that the writer put into the musical, such as:
“The musical Hamilton, while accurate in many ways, leaves out key parts of American history, presents a nationalist view of founding fathers, and downplays the racism of the times.”
Once you’ve written your initial working thesis statement, you’ll then need to get information to back that up. For example, the musical completely leaves out Benjamin Franklin, portrays the founding fathers in a nationalist way that is too complimentary, and shows Hamilton as a staunch abolitionist despite the fact that his family likely did own slaves.
Step 4: Revise and refine your thesis statement before you start writing
Read through your thesis statement several times before you begin to compose your full essay. You need to make sure the statement is ironclad, since it is the foundation of the entire paper. Edit it or have a peer review it for you to make sure everything makes sense and that you feel like you can truly write a paper on the topic. Once you’ve done that, you can then begin writing your paper.
When writing a thesis statement, there are some common pitfalls you should avoid so that your paper can be as solid as possible. Make sure you always edit the thesis statement before you do anything else. You also want to ensure that the thesis statement is clear and concise. Don’t make your reader hunt for your point. Finally, put your thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph and have your introduction flow toward that statement. Your reader will expect to find your statement in its traditional spot.
If you’re having trouble getting started, or need some guidance on your essay, there are tools available that can help you. CollegeVine offers a free peer essay review tool where one of your peers can read through your essay and provide you with valuable feedback. Getting essay feedback from a peer can help you wow your instructor or college admissions officer with an impactful essay that effectively illustrates your point.
Related CollegeVine Blog Posts
Thesis Statements
What this handout is about.
This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.
Introduction
Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.
What is a thesis statement?
A thesis statement:
- tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
- is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
- directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
- makes a claim that others might dispute.
- is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.
If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)
How do I create a thesis?
A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.
Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .
How do I know if my thesis is strong?
If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :
- Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
- Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
- Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
- Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
- Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
- Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.
Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:
Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.
You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.
- Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
- Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
- Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
- Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
- Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?
After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:
Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.
This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.
Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.
You begin to analyze your thesis:
- Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.
Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:
In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.
- Do I answer the question? Yes!
- Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
- Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
- Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
- Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”
After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:
Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.
This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.
Works consulted
We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.
Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.
Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.
Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.
Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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The Great DepressionTopic: the great depressionQuestion: How did the great depression affect americans?Thesis statement:The great depression affected americans because it destroyed their economy. Millions of families lost theirs savings as many banks collapsed in the 1930's.The Great Depression was the worst economic drop of all times in the ...
Choose a thesis statement about mental health awareness here. People with Bipolar depression have more difficulties getting quality sleep. Bipolar disorder influences every aspect of a person's life and changes their quality of life. Bipolar disorder causes depressive moods or lows of mental disorder. Bipolar is a severe mental issue that can ...
A strong essay on the Great Depression should be centered around a clear, concise thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about the Great Depression. For instance, you might analyze the causes of the Great Depression, its impact on a particular sector of society, or the effectiveness of the responses by ...
The 1930s were a time of many changes. Our country had many problems that led to a long hard depression. The United States went from the "Roaring 20's", a time of success... Great Depression. Topics: Economy of the United States, Unemployment, United States, Wall Street Crash of 1929, Wealth. 4.
Great Depression and Cold War: Making of Modern America. This paper will explore the causes of the Great Depression, the measures implemented within the New Deal, Cold War tensions, and the changes to the American society by the civil rights movement. American History: Great Depression and Other Issues.
5 Thesis Statements about Anxiety& Depression: "Depression and anxiety Co-occurring disorders are a major concern in mental health, necessitating integrated treatment options that meet the unique challenges that co-occurring diseases provide.". "The utilization of technology-driven therapies, such as smartphone apps and telehealth ...
The Great Depression was a period of immense economic turmoil that gripped the world in the 1930s. It left a profound impact on various aspects of society and shaped the course of history. As a student of history, delving into the depths of this significant era provides a multitude of research opportunities.
Great Depression, worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939.It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. Although it originated in the United States, the Great Depression caused drastic declines in output ...
Thesis Statement: It is imperative to prioritize mental health and provide support for individuals struggling with mental illness in order to promote overall well-being and prevent the negative consequences of neglecting mental health. Body 1. The Importance of Mental Health Awareness and Support. Mental health is a fundamental aspect of our overall well-being, and it is essential to raise ...
Step 2: Write your initial answer. After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process. The internet has had more of a positive than a negative effect on education.
Understanding what makes a good thesis statement is one of the major keys to writing a great research paper or argumentative essay. The thesis statement is where you make a claim that will guide you through your entire paper. ... Cyber bullying puts a lot of stress on many teens, and can cause depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts ...
A strong thesis statement for an essay on the Great Depression could be: "The Great Depression, a period of unprecedented economic hardship, was a result of a confluence of factors, including the stock market crash of 1929, widespread bank failures, and insufficient government intervention, but a closer examination suggests that the ...
The Great Depression was a worldwide phenome-non, and the collapse of international trade was even greater than the collapse of world output of goods and services. Still, like the stock market crash, protectionist trade policies alone did not cause the Great Depression. Other experts offer different explanations for the Great Depression.
Use brainstorming techniques and write down all ideas that pop into your head. Review the points and create a thesis statement for depression research paper or essay. Organize the list of points to create a structure of your essay. Put the points in a logical order. Check all aspects to make sure that each of them is relevant to your objective.
Abstract. This paper provides a survey of the Great Depression comprising both a narrative account and a detailed review of the empirical evidence, focusing especially on the experience of the United States. We examine the reasons for and flawed resolution of the American banking crisis, as well as the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy.
The Great Depression was a phenomenon that did significant damage to the American economy. Before that, the economy grew on an unseen scale under President Hoover, but the growth was marked by excess and inequity, which eventually caused the Wall Street Crash. Hoover, clinging to the laissez-faire policy, was completely unable to alleviate the ...
It is a statement that answers your research question. The statement is supported throughout your paper with examples and evidence. What makes a good thesis statement? It takes a position, or advances an opinion. It is specific, not too broad, but not too narrow. It is an arguable statement; there is room for discussion or disagreement.
Step 4: Revise and refine your thesis statement before you start writing. Read through your thesis statement several times before you begin to compose your full essay. You need to make sure the statement is ironclad, since it is the foundation of the entire paper. Edit it or have a peer review it for you to make sure everything makes sense and ...
Ideally, you would do so in a way that fits with your thesis statement. Here is an example which may or may not fit with what you have written in your essay: The Great Depression had many causes ...
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Crash of 1929 - Election of 1930. Texas remained fairly optimistic during the first few years of the Great Depression. There. was a general sentiment throughout the state that the depression was the problem of New. Yorkers and stock traders, and that the agrarian and oil economy of Texas would be impervious.
A thesis statement: tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion. is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper. directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself.