Trade and Protectionism in Interwar Germany
Lead Research Organisation:
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Department Name: History Faculty
Abstract
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Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Alexander Wulfers (Student) |
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES/P000649/1 | 30/09/2017 | 29/09/2028 | |||
| 1923554 | Studentship | ES/P000649/1 | 30/09/2017 | 13/04/2021 | Alexander Wulfers |
| Description | The project consists of three papers with distinct findings. The first paper discusses the political economy of trade policy in the Weimar Republic. I have collected data on the economic structure of interwar Germany at the district level. I show that there is an increasing correlation of a sector's trade balance and the sector's voting behaviour with regards to protectionist parties and that the protectionist vote increasingly shifts to the Nazis. This research confirms that trade policy is an important factor in electoral results of the Weimar Republic which has been neglected so far. The second paper is an in-depth discussion of the structure of German trade during the Great Depression. I show that there are notable parallels in the 1930s trade collapse with that in the 2008 financial crisis, suggesting that similar compositional affects may be at work in causing these collapses. The third paper investigates the impact of trade policy on trade during the 1930s. I show that rising tariffs caused about a 40 percent drop in imports by 1933, about 50 percent by 1938, suggesting that protectionism contributed to a trade collapse twice as big as the 2008 collapse, but only accounts for a minority of the total decline in the 1930s. Furthermore, it did not contribute significantly to the geographical shift of trade in this period. |
| Exploitation Route | The data I have collected will be extremely useful in more in-depth analyses of German trade and I will eventually make them publically available. Furthermore, I hope that future research will continue to fill in the puzzle pieces of international trade in the interwar period. My analysis of one country, Germany, contributes to that and lays further groundwork for comparative analysis. |
| Sectors | Government Democracy and Justice |