In economics, a depression is a sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies. It is a more severe downturn than a recession, which is seen as part of a normal business cycle.
Considered a rare and extreme form of recession, a depression is characterized by its length, and by abnormal increases in unemployment, falls in the availability of credit, shrinking output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, reduced amounts of trade and commerce, as well as highly volatile relative currency value fluctuations, mostly devaluations. Price deflation, financial crisis and bank failures are also common elements of a depression.
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There is no widely agreed definition for a depression, though some have been proposed. In the United States the National Bureau of Economic Research determines contractions and expansions in the business cycle, but does not declare depressions.[1] Generally, periods labeled depressions are marked by a substantial and sustained shortfall of the ability to purchase goods relative to the amount that could be produced using current resources and technology (potential output).[2] Another proposed definition of depression includes two general rules: 1) a decline in real GDP exceeding 10%, or 2) a recession lasting 2 or more years.[3][4]
The best-known depression was the Great Depression, which affected most national economies in the world throughout the 1930s. This depression is generally considered to have begun with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the crisis quickly spread to other national economies.[5] Between 1929 and 1933, the gross national product of the United States decreased by 33% while the rate of unemployment increased to 25%. The probable causes of the Great Depression include the loose money policies of the Federal Reserve and the misallocation of capital based on easy and inexpensive credit.
A long-term effect of the Great Depression has been the departure of every major currency from the gold standard. See: Bretton Woods Accord
Less-known today and much shallower, but longer, than the Great Depression is the Long Depression of 1873–96, which at the time was called the Great Depression.
The Panic of 1837 was an American financial crisis, built on a speculative real estate market [6]. The bubble burst on May 10, 1837 in New York City, when every bank stopped payment in gold and silver coinage. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression[6], with the failure of banks and record high unemployment levels[citation needed].
Several Latin American countries had severe downturns in the 1980s: by the Kehoe and Prescott definition of a great depression as at least one year with output 20% below trend, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico experienced great depressions in the 1980s, and Argentina experienced another in 1998–2002.
This definition also includes the economic performance of New Zealand from 1974–1992 and Switzerland from 1973 to the present, although this designation for Switzerland has been controversial.[7][8]
Over the period 1980–2000, Sub-Saharan Africa broadly suffered a fall in absolute income levels.[9]
The economic crisis in the 1990s that struck former members of the Soviet Union was almost twice as intense as the Great Depression in the countries of Western Europe and the United States in the 1930s.[10][11] Average standards of living registered a catastrophic fall in the early 1990s in many parts of the former Eastern Bloc - most notably, in post-Soviet states.[12] Even before Russia's financial crisis of 1998, Russia's GDP was half of what it had been in the early 1990s.[11] Some populations are still poorer today than they were in 1989 (e.g. Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Central Asia, Caucasus). The collapse of the Soviet planned economy and the transition to market economy resulted in catastrophic declines in GDP of about 45% during the 1990–1996 period[13] and poverty in the region had increased more than tenfold.[14]
Finnish economists refer to the Finnish economic decline around the breakup of the Soviet Union (1989–1994) as a great depression; this is partly attributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and partly to the Scandinavian banking crisis, which was also suffered, to a lesser degree, by Sweden and Norway.
  | Outliving a long depression - 6 companies born during downturns - Outliving a long depression (2) - Small Business |
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