Primary reading
Kitson, M (2012), End of an Epoch: Britain’s Withdrawal from the Gold Standard, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, June
Discussion questions
- Outline (a) how the gold standard was meant to function in theory and (b) Churchill’s case for Britain returning to gold (at pre-war parity).
- Identify the structural flaws Kitson identifies in the gold standard, in terms of both market responses and policy mechanisms.
- How were such structural flaws ‘starkly exposed’ by the Great Depression?
- What were the immediate and longer-term consequences of Britain leaving the gold standard in 1931?
Background reading
Crafts, N and Fearon, P (2010), Lessons from the 1930s Great Depression, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, v26 no3, pp 285-317
Middleton, R (2010), British monetary and fiscal policy in the 1930s, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, v26 no3, pp414-441