France in the Depression of the Early 1930s

  • Pierre Villa
Chapter

Abstract

Neither the degree of responsibility of the French economy for the Great Depression, nor its influence upon it, are easy to appraise, because France entered the Depression late and many of its adjustments seem at first glance to be idiosyncratic. One is thus tempted to regard the French case as sui generis. However, some contemporaries, and economists such as A. Sauvy, do blame the lengthening and deepening of the Depression in France on the misunderstanding of economics by contemporary policymakers, and especially their fixation on certain monetary and financial doctrines. Such criticisms have been reinforced by Anglo-Saxon, especially British, accusations, firstly that France implemented a restrictive monetary policy as of 1928 in order to accumulate gold reserves and thereby exert political pressure in relation to the Reparations question, and secondly that France did not employ expansionist, open-market monetary operations to accommodate the depression after 1930. They claim that in a certain sense economic policy was overloaded by the political objectives it was also made to serve.

Keywords

Interest Rate Monetary Policy Fiscal Policy Real Exchange Rate Real Interest Rate 
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Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2003

Authors and Affiliations

  • Pierre Villa

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