The Great Depression

This book examines the nature and the causes of the 1929 depression, tracing its background and the broad conditions from which the depression emerged. As an influence on economic activity, Lionel Robbins sees World War I, and the political changes that followed it, as a series of shifts in the fundamental conditions of demand and supply, to which economic activity had to adapt. The needs of the war had called a huge apparatus of mechanical equipment into being, which the resumption of...
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This book examines the nature and the causes of the 1929 depression, tracing its background and the broad conditions from which the depression emerged. As an influence on economic activity, Lionel Robbins sees World War I, and the political changes that followed it, as a series of shifts in the fundamental conditions of demand and supply, to which economic activity had to adapt. The needs of the war had called a huge apparatus of mechanical equipment into being, which the resumption of peace rendered in large part superfluous. The war also disrupted world markets, and its settlement created conditions that aggravated this disruption. Thus, the struggle that was to end nationalist friction in fact gave nationalism new scope. Murray Weidenbaum's masterful new introduction adds to its contemporary value.