Maggs Bros.

Since it first appeared in 1963, Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression has been the definitive treatment of the causes of the depression, arguing “that government caused and lengthened the Great Depression through distortionary monetary and regulatory policies” (New Palgrave). It opens with a theoretical treatment of business cycle theory, showing how an expansive monetary policy generates imbalances between investment and consumption. He proceeds to examine the Fed’s policies of the 1920s, demonstrating that it was quite inflationary even if the effects did not show up in the price of goods and services. He showed that the stock market correction was merely one symptom of the investment boom that led inevitably to a bust.

“Murray Rothbard was influential in continuing the tradition of the Austrian school of economics in America. Rothbard wrote a great deal on economic history, often documenting government getting in the way of markets” (New Palgrave).