Economic History and Economic Policy

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050712000034
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 289-307
• 关键词: POLITICAL-ECONOMY; fiscal-policy; pragmatics; Analogies

摘要

The lessons of history were widely invoked in 2008/09 as analysts and policymakers sought to make sense of the global financial crisis. Specifically, analogies with the early stages of the Great Depression of the 1930s were widely drawn. Building on work in cognitive science and literature on foreign policy making, this article seeks to account for the influence of this particular historical analogy and asks how it shaped both perceptions and the economic policy response. It asks how historical scholarship might be better organized to inform the process of economic policymaking. It concludes with some reflections on how research in economic history will be reshaped by the crisis.