Causes of the Great Depression(1929~33) in the United States and Economic Policy

This article pays attention mainly to the causes of the Great. Depression in the United States about which a consensus has not emerged until now. Not a few scholars attribute them to the failure of the American economic policies. Was it ta be avoided if any other particular policy was executed than the actual one? Concerned mainly about this question, this paper tries to explain whether there was a room for any other better policy ta cope with the American Depression. We should not assume that there was already a ‘great’ Depression with the dramatic stock market crash of October 1929 or the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in June 1930 or the ‘first’ banking crisis in November 1930. What made the depression really ‘great’ was especially the contagious international financial crisis in the summer of 1931. It means It was the starting point of the ‘real’ Great Depression in the U.S., and this should not be taken as a phenomenon confined to the United States. The prevention ol it through an active anti-cyclical policy was extremely constrained by diverse institutional, political and psychological factors during the 1920s and the early 1930s. Therefore, the origin of the American Depression should not be attributed to the failure of the economic policies.