The Great Depression in the eyes of Bulgaria's inter-war economists

Kolev, Stefan (2009): The Great Depression in the eyes of Bulgaria's inter-war economists.

Abstract

The current paper is an attempt to reconstruct the economic policy debates in Bulgaria around the Great Depression in the 1930s. The goal is twofold. First, it is of interest to track down the development of Bulgarian economic thought in the inter-war period and to analyse its intellectual relationships to the evolution of European (especially German-language) political economy. Secondly, due to some significant analogies between the situation in the surveyed period and the current crisis, it seems possible to tentatively draw conclusions from the economists’ debates then as a contribution to crisis management and post-crisis development of Bulgaria today.

The paper is only secondarily interested in the quantitative economic history of the 1930s; instead, the primary objective is to show that history of economic thought as a discipline can give qualitative indications how past theoretical discourse can be inspiring both for conducting economic policy and for avoiding past mistakes.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Great Depression, Bulgaria, economic policy, history of economic thought
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B2 - History of Economic Thought since 1925 > B20 - General; N - Economic History > N1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics ; Industrial Structure ; Growth ; Fluctuations > N14 - Europe: 1913-; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches > B53 - Austrian

References

Eucken, W. (1932). Staatliche Strukturwandlungen und die Krisis des Kapitalismus, in: Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Issue 2/36, pp. 297–321.

Hagemann, H. (2009). Volkswirtschaftslehre in den 1920er Jahren, in: Schefold et al. (eds): Das Ideal des schönen Lebens und die Wirklichkeit der Weimarer Republik, Berlin.

Hayek, F. А. von (1975). Full employment at any price?, Institute of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper No. 45, London.

Hayek, F. A. von (1929/76): Geldtheorie und Konjunkturtheorie (Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle), Habilitation, 2nd German language edition, Salzburg.

Klausinger, H. (ed.) (2005): Machlup, Morgenstern, Haberler, Hayek und andere. Wirtschaftspolitische Beiträge in kritischer Zeit (1931–1934), Marburg.

Mises, L. von (1912/24): Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel (Theory of Money and Credit), Habilitation, 2nd German language edition, Munich and Leipzig.

Swrakoff, G. (1939). Review of: „Nationalökonomie — wozu?” by Walter Eucken, in: Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Issue 3/49,1939, pp. 122–123.

United Nations (1933). La production mondiale et les prix, reprinted in: JBEA (1933), pp. 520–525.