Introduction

The focus in this volume is on Australia in an international context so that we can see to what extent our depression experience was different from that of other countries with which we usually compare ourselves. We begin with an overview of the depression experience in six countries—Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States—to provide a backdrop against which to place the individual chapters. The first task is to measure the depth of the depression in each country, focusing primarily on unemployment, employment and output. The first impression created by this exercise is the similarity of the depression experience. The economic downturn starts at much the same time (1929–30) in all countries and a strong employment recovery begins within three to five years.

Upon further investigation a number of systematic differences become apparent, especially between Canada and the United States, on the one hand, and Australia and the United Kingdom, on the other. This dichotomy is so striking, and the availability of internationally comparable data is so much better for these four countries, that the overview devotes quite a lot of space to this comparison. The major differences revolve around the depth of the depression, the date of the recovery process, the degree of job sharing and changes in the terms of trade.

After measuring the extent of these differences we change our focus towards those aspects of economic policy that attracted the attention of our authors.