High unemployment has been one of the most disturbing features of the economy of the 1980s. For a precedent, one must look to the interwar period and in particular to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It follows that recent years have been marked by a resurgence of interest amongst academics in interwar unemployment. The debate has been contentious. There is nothing like the analysis of a period which recorded rates of un employment approaching 25 per cent to highlight the differences between competing schools of thought on the operation of labour markets. Along with historians, economists whose objective is to better understand the causes, character and consequences of contemporary unemployment and sociologists seeking to understand contemporary society's perceptions and responses to joblessness have devoted increasing attention to this his torical episode. Like many issues in economic history, this one can be approached in a variety of ways using different theoretical approaches, tools of analysis and levels of disaggregation. Much of the recent literature on the func tioning of labour markets in the Depression has been macroeconomic in nature and has been limited to individual countries. Debates from the period itself have been revived and new questions stimulated by modern research have been opened. Many such studies have been narrowly fo cused and have failed to take into account the array of historical evidence collected and analj. sed by contemporaries or reconstructed and re-inter preted by historians.

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1 Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective: An Overview.- 1 Introduction.- 2 The Emergence of the Problem.- 3 Aggregate Unemployment Statistics.- 4 Labour Demand and Supply.- 5 Unemployment and Labour Market Adjustment.- 6 The Incidence of Unemployment.- 7 Labour Turnover and Unemployment Duration.- 8 The Effects of Unemployment.- 9 Conclusion.- 2 The Macroeconomics of the Interwar Years: International Comparisons.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Relative International Performance in the Great Depression.- 3 A Model of the Open Economy, World Prices Given.- 4 Estimation Results.- 5 The World.- 6 Concluding Remarks.- 3 Labour Market Structure and the Nature of Unemployment in Interwar Britain.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Stocks, Rows and Duration of Unemployment.- 3 Who Were the Unemployed?.- 4 Unemployment in the 1930s and the 1980s: Some Comparisons.- 5 The Causes of Long-Term Unemployment.- 6 The Sources of Rapid Turnover.- 7 Conclusion.- 4 Unemployment, Insurance and Health in Interwar Britain.- 1 Introduction.- 2 The Causes of Poverty.- 3 The Results of Unemployment.- 4 Unemployment and Stature.- 5 National Socialist Economics: The Wirtschaftswunder Reconsidered.- 1 Introduction.- 2 National Socialist Work Creation Measures, 193335.- 3 National Socialist Labour Market Statistics.- 6 Unemployment in the 1930s: The Case of Italy.- 1 The Great Depression and Unemployment: An Unexplored Territory.- 2 Italy's Labour Market Between the Wars.- 3 Measuring Industrial Unemployment.- 4 Fascism and Unemployment.- 5 An Appraisal of Labour Policies.- 6 Unemployment and Wages.- 7 Some Concluding Remarks.- 7 Why Was Unemployment so Low in France During the 1930s?.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Macroeconomic Developments and the Labour Market Statistics.- 3 The Measurement of FrenchUnemployment.- 4 Analysis by Occupation and by Département of Unemployment in France During the 1930s.- 5 The Employment Relationship and Unemployment in the 1930s.- 6 Conclusion.- 8 Interwar Unemployment in Belgium.- 1 Introduction.- 2 Institutional Aspects of Unemployment in Belgium, 192039: The System of Voluntary Unemployment Insurance.- 3 Quantitative Aspects of Unemployment in Belgium, 192039.- 4 Structural Aspects of Unemployment in Belgium, 193037.- 5 Conclusion.- 9 Interwar Unemployment in the United States: Evidence from the 1940 Census Sample.- 1 Introduction.- 2 The Data.- 3 Multivariate Analysis.- 4 Implications.- 5 The Added Worker Effect: Labour Force Participation of Married Women.- 6 Concluding Remarks.- 10 Unemployment and Relief in Canada.- 1 Introduction.- 2 The Incidence of Unemployment.- 3 Coping with the Depression.- 4 Conclusions.- 11 The Australian and US Labour Markets in the 1930s.- 1 Introduction.- 2 The Australian-US Comparisons.- 3 Further Observations on Unemployment in Australia.- 4 Conclusion.