The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was a watershed for both economic thought and economic policymaking. It led to the belief that market economies are inherently unstable and to the revolutionary work of John Maynard Keynes. Its impact on popular economic wisdom is still apparent today.

This book, which uses a common framework to 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 also provides links to computer programs for applying the methodology.