The World Economy between the World Wars

The late Charles H. Feinstein was a Fellow of All Souls College, and Chichele Professor of Economic History Emeritus at the University of Oxford.Peter Temin is the Elisha Gray II Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), having been a full professor in the Economics Department at MIT since 1970. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1959 and his Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1964. He was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, 1962-65, Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, 1985-86, Head of the Economics Department at MIT, 1990-93, President of the Economic History Association, 1995-96, and President of the Eastern Economic Association, 2001-02.Gianni Toniolo is Research Professor of Economics at Duke University (North Carolina, USA) and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London). He has been professor of economics in Rome and Venice and a visiting professor at various universities including Oxford, Berkeley, and Hitotsubashi (Tokyo). He is the author of several books and essays on European economic growth and international financial history.

When the Charles Feinstein, Peter Temin, and Gianni Toniolo published The European Economy Between the World Wars over ten years ago, it immediately became the standard history of European economic developments in the 1920s and 1930s. Now the authors have expanded the previous work very substantially to the international economy as a whole. The World Economy Between the World Wars is, like its predecessor, destined to be an instant classic. It is a comprehensive and balanced account of one of the most important and perplexing periods in world economic history. The authors analyze the economics, and the political economy, of the global and national trends that culminated in the Great Depression and eventually World War Two. In doing so, they provide both an insightful historical account of a crucial era, and thoughtful observations on its implications for the contemporary age.

• Chapter 1: The interwar economy in a secular perspective ; Chapter 2: The legacy of the First World War ; Chapter 3: The crises of the 1920s ; Chapter 4: Output, productivity and technical progress in the 1920s ; Chapter 5: International capital movements ; Chapter 6: The onset of the great depression ; Chapter 7: Unemployment ; Chapter 8: The fragmented world of the 1930s ; Chapter 9: Industrial progress and recovery ; Chapter 10: Epilogue: the past and the present ; Guide to further reading ; References ; Index