Did Herbert Hoover Start The Great Depression?

Lee E. Ohanian, Professor of Economics, Director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at UCLA, published research showing Herbert Hoover's policies started the 1930s Depression.

Our current crisis continues to draw parallels to the Great Depression (Eichengreen and O’Rourke 2009) and has refocused attention on the 1930s. Several features of the US Depression, particularly its early phases, represent challenges to economic theory. These features, describe below in more detail, suggest that non-monetary, non-banking factors were important – in particular Herbert Hoover’s cartelisation and wage-setting policies.

Read Ohanian's complete article, "Herbert Hoover and the start of the Great Depression"