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An Assessment of the Causes of the Abandonment of the Gold Standard by the U.S. in 1933
Author(s) -
Hallwood Paul,
MacDonald Ronald,
Marsh Ian W.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2000.tb00346.x
Subject(s) - gold standard (test) , great depression , abandonment (legal) , liberian dollar , economics , depression (economics) , us dollar , set (abstract data type) , macroeconomics , keynesian economics , monetary economics , finance , political science , exchange rate , statistics , mathematics , computer science , law , programming language
In this paper we present an investigation of the pressures on the United States to devalue the dollar against the franc and gold in the early 1930s. We calculate monthly time‐series of realignment expectations and find that these are well explained by a set of fundamental economic variables. The implication is drawn that macroeconomic events were at least in part responsible for jolting the U.S. off the gold standard and that the Federal Reserve was constrained in its response to the Depression by the United States' commitment to gold.