EconAir

Vienna's Ringstrasse Europe: 1871-1914. Some political commentators believe we are returning to a political order similar to that of Europe in the years preceding World War I. It was a period of tremendous economic development, economic growth, and economic change. Some economic historians call this period the Second Industrial Revolution.  Much of the technology of the modern world was created during this period - electricity, steel, skyscrapers, autos, oil refining, chemicals, telephones, radio, movies, record players, and airplanes. Large expansion of railroads and steamships. Mass production, factories, industrial centers and the modern corporation. Large expansion in the economic role of finance and financial institutions. Also a large increase in international trade that threatened established national economic groups with political power, especially European landowners and farmers (except in Austria-Hungary). As the Industrial and Transportation Revolutio

Bismarck The recent excellent histories on the factors leading up to World War One don’t go back far enough. The heart of the Treaty of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) was the “Holy Alliance,” an agreement of the monarchs of Russia, Prussia (later Germany) and Austria (later Austria-Hungary) to stamp out any return to revolutionary ideals of the French Revolution.   The three monarchies cooperated until the Crimean War. The Crimean War (1853-56) was triggered by Russian attempts to expand its influence around the Black Sea, force the Ottoman Empire to allow Russian warships through the Dardanelles and increase influence in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire (later Turkey) retreated.   To keep Russia bottled up in the Black Sea and out of the Mediterranean, England and France came into the war on the side of the Ottoman Empire.   Prussia remained neutral.   Austria-Hungary also remained neutral but Russia expected Austrian support. After the war, Russian

Famous Headline Introduction The usual reasons given for the Great Depression – the stock market crash of 1929 and the later collapse of the banking system – do not tell the whole story. Available economic data indicate (there were no national income accounts in 1929) that a recession had already begun before the stock market crash. The crash of October and November of 1929 was a catalyst that made the recession worse but the partial stock market recovery in early 1930 did not end the recession. Industrial production continued to fall quickly and unemployment rose rapidly in 1930. Continuing farm and businesses failures over the next two years wiped out thousands of small rural banks and threatened total financial collapse in early1933.  For a fuller explanation, we have to go back to the 1920s to see additional reasons for the origins and the rapid decline in output at the beginning of the Great Depression. We have to look at the internationa