IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/sjecst/v158y2022i1d10.1186_s41937-022-00100-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The limits of internal devaluation: Switzerland during the great depression

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Rosenkranz

    (Asian Development Bank)

  • Tobias Straumann

    (University of Zurich)

  • Ulrich Woitek

    (University of Zurich)

Abstract

During the Great Depression, countries endowed with abundant gold reserves were not able to leave the gold standard and devalue their currencies until the mid-1930s. Instead, they were forced to go down the road of internal devaluation. We analyze the policies of the Swiss authorities by estimating a New Keynesian small open economy model. Our results show that the long adherence to the gold standard and the failure of internal devaluation imposed considerable costs on the Swiss economy. Moreover, counterfactual exercises suggest that a timely devaluation would have led to an early recovery from the Great Depression.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Rosenkranz & Tobias Straumann & Ulrich Woitek, 2022. "The limits of internal devaluation: Switzerland during the great depression," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 158(1), pages 1-17, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sjecst:v:158:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1186_s41937-022-00100-9
    DOI: 10.1186/s41937-022-00100-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s41937-022-00100-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1186/s41937-022-00100-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Clarida & Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2000. "Monetary Policy Rules and Macroeconomic Stability: Evidence and Some Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 147-180.
    2. Javier Garcia-Cicco & Roberto Pancrazi & Martin Uribe, 2010. "Real Business Cycles in Emerging Countries?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2510-2531, December.
    3. Lubik, Thomas A. & Schorfheide, Frank, 2007. "Do central banks respond to exchange rate movements? A structural investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1069-1087, May.
    4. Richard Clarida & Jordi Gali & Mark Gertler, 2001. "Optimal Monetary Policy in Open versus Closed Economies: An Integrated Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 248-252, May.
    5. Eichengreen, Barry & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1985. "Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(4), pages 925-946, December.
    6. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    7. Ireland, Peter N., 2004. "A method for taking models to the data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1205-1226, March.
    8. Wolf, Nikolaus, 2008. "Scylla and Charybdis. Explaining Europe's exit from gold, January 1928-December 1936," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 383-401, September.
    9. Bernanke, Ben S, 1995. "The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(1), pages 1-28, February.
    10. Feinstein, Charles H. & Temin, Peter & Toniolo, Gianni, 1997. "The European Economy Between the Wars," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198774815.
    11. Alexander Rathke & Tobias Straumann & Ulrich Woitek, 2017. "OVERVALUED: SWEDISH MONETARY POLICY IN THE 1930s," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1355-1369, November.
    12. Jordi Galí & Tommaso Monacelli, 2005. "Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Volatility in a Small Open Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 707-734.
    13. V. V Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2002. "Can Sticky Price Models Generate Volatile and Persistent Real Exchange Rates?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(3), pages 533-563.
    14. Chib, Siddhartha & Ramamurthy, Srikanth, 2010. "Tailored randomized block MCMC methods with application to DSGE models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 155(1), pages 19-38, March.
    15. Ben Bemanke & Harold James, 1991. "The Gold Standard, Deflation, and Financial Crisis in the Great Depression: An International Comparison," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Markets and Financial Crises, pages 33-68, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Klein, Paul, 2000. "Using the generalized Schur form to solve a multivariate linear rational expectations model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(10), pages 1405-1423, September.
    17. Eichengreen, Barry, 1996. "Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195101133.
    18. Richard Clarida & Jordi Gali & Mark Gertler, 2001. "Optimal Monetary Policy in Closed versus Open Economies: An Integrated Approach," NBER Working Papers 8604, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Campa, José Manuel, 1990. "Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s: An Extension to Lation America," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(03), pages 677-682, September.
    20. Michael Bordo & Thomas Helbling & Harold James, 2007. "Swiss Exchange Rate Policy in the 1930s. Was the Delay in Devaluation Too High a Price to Pay for Conservatism?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 1-25, February.
    21. Choudhri, Ehsan U & Kochin, Levis A, 1980. "The Exchange Rate and the International Transmission of Business Cycle Disturbances: Some Evidence from the Great Depression," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 12(4), pages 565-574, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter Rosenkranz & Tobias Straumann & Ulrich Woitek, 2014. "A small open economy in the Great Depression: the case of Switzerland," ECON - Working Papers 164, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    2. Alexander Rathke & Tobias Straumann & Ulrich Woitek, 2017. "OVERVALUED: SWEDISH MONETARY POLICY IN THE 1930s," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1355-1369, November.
    3. Nicholas Crafts & Peter Fearon, 2010. "Lessons from the 1930s Great Depression," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 26(3), pages 285-317, Autumn.
    4. Mitchener, Kris James & Wandschneider, Kirsten, 2015. "Capital controls and recovery from the financial crisis of the 1930s," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 188-201.
    5. Steffen Ahrens & Stephen Sacht, 2014. "Estimating a high-frequency New-Keynesian Phillips curve," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 607-628, March.
    6. Albers, Thilo & Uebele, Martin, 2015. "The global impact of the great depression," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 64491, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Camilo E Tovar, 2006. "Devaluations, output and the balance sheet effect: a structural econometric analysis," BIS Working Papers 215, Bank for International Settlements.
    8. Albers, Thilo Nils Hendrik, 2018. "The prelude and global impact of the Great Depression: Evidence from a new macroeconomic dataset," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 150-163.
    9. Eichengreen, Barry & Irwin, Douglas A., 2010. "The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed and Why?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 871-897, December.
    10. Massimiliano Marcellino & Yuliya Rychalovska, 2014. "Forecasting with a DSGE Model of a Small Open Economy within the Monetary Union," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 315-338, August.
    11. Richard S. Grossman & Christopher M. Meissner, 2010. "International aspects of the Great Depression and the crisis of 2007: similarities, differences, and lessons," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 26(3), pages 318-338, Autumn.
    12. Wolfram Berger, 2008. "Monetary Policy Rules for a Small Open Economy," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 37(1), pages 1-30, February.
    13. Martin Ellison & Sang Seok Lee & Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, 2024. "The Ends of 27 Big Depressions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(1), pages 134-168, January.
    14. Mitchener, Kris James & Wandschneider, Kirsten, 2013. "Capital Controls and Recovery from the Financial Crisis of the 1930s," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 132, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    15. Batini, Nicoletta & Harrison, Richard & Millard, Stephen P., 2003. "Monetary policy rules for an open economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(11-12), pages 2059-2094, September.
    16. Guillermo Felices & Vicente Tuesta, 2013. "Monetary policy in a dual currency environment," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(34), pages 4739-4753, December.
    17. Nicholas Crafts, 2014. "What Does the 1930s' Experience Tell Us about the Future of the Eurozone?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 713-727, July.
    18. Rodrigo Caputo & Luis Oscar Herrera, 2013. "Efficient CPI-Based Taylor Rules in Small Open Economies," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 694, Central Bank of Chile.
    19. Leith, Campbell & Wren-Lewis, Simon, 2009. "Taylor rules in the open economy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 971-995, November.
    20. Alpaslan AKÇORAOĞLU, 2012. "Yeni Açık Ekonomi Makroiktisat Teorisi ve Para Politikasının Uluslararası Boyutları," Ekonomik Yaklasim, Ekonomik Yaklasim Association, vol. 23(85), pages 57-82.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Great Depression; Switzerland; New Keynesian business cycle model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sjecst:v:158:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1186_s41937-022-00100-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.