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EH.NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by EH.NET (September 1997)
David Glasner, editor, _Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia_.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. xv + 779 pp. Index. $95.00 (cloth),
ISBN: 0-8240-0944-4.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert Whaples, Department of Economics, Wake Forest
University. [log in to unmask]
"The motion of the economy, unlike that of heavenly bodies, conforms
to no immutable mathematical laws and follows no repetitive patterns
(p. 66)"
David Glasner (economist at the Bureau of Economics, U.S. Federal Trade
Commission) has assembled a stellar cast who have written an exceptionally
useful reference book. _Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia_
includes 327 original articles on every major aspect of business cycles,
fluctuations, financial crises, recessions, and depressions. The articles,
which range from macroeconomic theory to econometrics to the historical
record, are generally up-to-date, clear and to the point. Most entries will
be accessible to students, but are informative enough to benefit almost any
professional, as well. Each includes a bibliography. A seven-page appendix
presents international data detailing business cycle turning points and
durations. Perhaps the highlight of the volume is a ten-page entry,
"Business Cycles" by Victor Zarnowitz, which surveys the entire field of
business cycle research and is quoted above.
EH.NET subscribers will find this work especially helpful. The encyclopedia
includes biographies of dozens of economists. (These entries focus almost
entirely on the individual's contributions to the understanding of business
cycles. The biography of W.W. Rostow, for example, only briefly mentions
his work in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and says little about
his writings on economic growth.)
The subjects of these biographies include Moses Abramovitz, Maurice Allais,
Luigi Amoroso, James Angell, Walter Bagehot, Otto Bauer, Eduard Bernstein,
Eugen Bohm-Bawerk, Arthur Burns, Richard Cantillon, Carl Cassel, John
Commons, Charles Coquelin, James Duesenberry, Otto Eckstein, Friedrich
Engels, Irving Fisher, Milton Friedman, Ragnar Frisch, John Fullarton,
Richard Goodwin, Tygve Haavelmo, Gottfried Haberler, Alvin Hansen, Roy
Harrod, Friedrich Hayek, John Hicks, Rudolf Hilferding, John Hobson, David
Hume, William Stanley Jevons, Nicholas Kaldor, Michal Kalecki, Karl
Kautsky, John Maynard Keynes, Charles Kindleberger, Lawrence Klein, Nikolai
Kondratieff, Tjalling Koopmans, Simon Kuznets, Oskar Lange, Frederick
Lavington, Abba Lerner, W. Arthur Lewis, Erik Lindahl, Eric Lundberg, Rosa
Luxembourg, Thomas Malthus, Alfred Marshall, Karl Marx, Lloyd Metzler, John
Stuart Mill, Frederick Mills, Hyman Minsky, Ilse Mintz, Ludwig von Mises,
Wesley Mitchell, Franco Modigliani, Gunnar Myrdal, Bertil Ohlin, Arthur
Okun, Vilfredo Pareto, Henry Parnell, Warren Persons, A. W. Phillips,
Arthur Pigou, David Ricardo, Lionel Robbins, Dennis Robertson, Joan
Robinson, W.W. Rostow, Paul Samuelson, Jean Baptiste Say, Joseph
Schumpeter, Anna Schwartz, Eugen Slutsky, Adam Smith, Arthur Smithies,
Piero Sraffa, Paul Sweezy, Henry Thornton, Jan Tinbergen, James Tobin,
Thomas Tooke, Robert Torrens, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, Thorstein Veblen,
Clark Warburton, J.G.K. Wicksell, Wladimir Woytinki and Victor Zarnowitz
Among the entries that will be of most interest to economic historians are:
Agriculture and Business Cycles by Randal Rucker and Daniel Sumner
Bank Charter Act of 1844 by David Glasner
Bank of England by David Glasner, C.A.E. Goodhart and Gary Santoni
Bank of France by Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur
Bank of the United States by Eugene White
Banking Panics by Gary Gorton
Baring Crisis (1890) by Richard Grossman
Business Cycles in Russia, 1700-1914 by Thomas Owen
Central Banking by Anna Schwartz
Clearinghouses by Gary Gorton
Crisis of 1763 and 1772-1773 by Eric Schubert
Crisis of the 1780s by Fred Moseley
Crisis of 1819 by Neil Skaggs
Crisis of 1847 by David Glasner
Crisis of 1857 by Hugh Rockoff
Crisis of 1873 by David Glasner
Crisis of 1907 by C.A.E. Goodhart
Crisis of 1914 by Forest Capie and Geoffrey Wood
Depression of 1873-1879 by Fred Moseley
Depression of 1882-1885 by Alan Sorkin
Depression of 1920-21 by Anthony Patrick O?Brien
Depression of 1937-1938 by W. Gene Smiley
Federal Deposit Insurance by James Barth and John Feid
Federal Reserve System: 1914-1941 by David Wheelock
Federal Reserve System, 1941-1993 by Thomas Havrilesky
Free Banking by Philippe Nataf
Glass-Steagall Act by Eugene White
Gold Standard by Michael Bordo
Gold Standard: Causes and Consequences by Earl Thompson
Great Depression in Britain (1929-1932) by Forrest Capie and Geoffrey Wood
Great Depression in France (1929-1938) by Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur
Great Depression in the U.S. (1929-1938) by Elmus Wicker
Great Depression of 1873-1896 by Forrest Capie and Geoffrey Wood
Industrial Revolution (c. 1750-1850) by Clark Nardinelli
Kondratieff Cycles by Robert Zevin
Leading Indicators: Historical Record by Geoffrey Moore
Long-Wave Theories by Massimo Di Matteo
Mississippi Bubble by Larry Neal
Napoleonic Wars by Larry Neal
Panic of 1825 by Michael Haupert
Panic of 1837 by Richard Timberlake
Panic of 1893 by Richard Timberlake
Phillips Curve by Richard Lipsey
Political Business Cycles by K. Alec Chrystal
Recessions after World War II by Alan Sorkin
Recessions (Supply-Side) in the 1970s by John Tatom
Reichsbank by Harold James
Seasonal Fluctuations and Financial Crises by Jeffrey Miron
Smoot-Hawley Tariff by David Glasner
South Sea Bubble by Larry Neal
Stock-Market Crash of 1929 by Eugene White
Tulipmania by Peter Garber
The encyclopedia is a valuable teaching tool. It is a must for any college
library.
Robert Whaples
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
Robert Whaples is Associate Director of EH.NET and author (with Jac
Heckelman) of "Political Business Cycles before the Great Depression,"
Economics Letters, 51, May 1996.
Copyright (c) 1997 by EH.Net and H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may
be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the
author and the list. For other permission, please contact
[log in to unmask] (Robert Whaples, Book Review Editor, EH.Net.
Telephone: 910-758-4916. Fax: 910-758-6028.)
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