The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was a watershed for both economic thought and economic policymaking. It led t0 the belief that market economies are inherently unstable and t0 the revolutionary work of John Maynard Keynes. Its impact on popular economic wisdom is still apparent t0day.
This book， which uses a common framework t0 study sixteen depressions， from the interwar period in Europe and America as well as from more recent times in Japan and Latin America， challenges the Keynesian theory of depressions. It develops and uses a methodology for studying depressions that relies on growth accounting and the general equilibrium growth model.
Each chapter of the book is accompanied by a data file that contains all of the data used in the analysis. This Web page als0 provides links t0 computer programs for applying the methodology.