Preliminary Programme

As the world economic crisis from 1929 onwards led to mass unemployment and poverty, international health experts were quick to look into the effects of these developments on public health. Common sense dictated that there must be a direct correlation. Reduced employment meant reduced income which, in turn, meant reduced expenditures for health, both on an individual and a public or corporate level (via state health benefits, health insurances etc.) In addition, the fall of prices for agricultural products resulted in widespread pauperisation of the rural population without preventing malnutrition both in the cities and on the countryside.
Surprisingly, however, none of this became evident in available mortality and morbidity data. In most areas, these vital statistics remained virtually unchanged or even showed slight improvements.
Bewildered scientists began a search for other, clinical indicators which might reflect the health status of people in a more nuanced and more realistic way. Coordinated by the Health Organisation of the League of Nations, others concentrated on the immediate tangible effects of unemployment on food consumption. This politicised ongoing studies on nutrition, drawing attention to questions of the respective responsibility of the state, the economic system and the individual for the nutritional status of the population. In the process, nutrition was linked to questions of school meals, minimal wages, effective social legislation, price regulations and wealth allocation within societies. Specific demands on the state by international health organisations and met with varying reactions from governments, depending on traditions and ideology. Thus, health concerns of economic crisis served as a catalyst to provoke discussions on fundamental issues of economic justice.

This paper, therefore, looks at the effect of the world economic crisis on a) the public health in Europe and North America, and b) on the international discourse on health politics and the responsibility of the state for its citizens. (Show less)

The expansion of markets for colonial goods in pre-industrial times has been studied in many ways: The development of coerced labour based production, commercial techniques and colonial politics has been considered to show how supply enlarged. Also the changing of social and cultural conditions that enabled an extension of demand, often determined by po-litical interest have been revealed. Although both European consumption and colonial pro-duction have been treated, less attention has been paid to the interaction of these spheres. Regarding the compatible expansion of production and consumption in the long-run, the mediation of supply and demand seems to have posed no serious problem and might there-fore indeed not be considered interesting. On the short run, however, market development turns out to have been extremely unsteady. External effects like bad harvests in the colonies (hampering production), bad harvests in Europe (hampering consumption) or war (hamper-ing trade and maybe also production or consumption) disturbed markets in such frequency and to such a degree, that it is hard or even impossible to detect a market equilibrium as suggested by neo-classical theory in the ever fluctuating prices. Instead there was a perma-nent interplay of insufficiently demanded supply and insufficiently supplied demand, some-times even put in the shade by insufficient linkage between both spheres of the market.
The appearance of such an external shock meant facing an adaptation crisis to the par-ticipants in the market. Anyway, the specific settings of trading, producing and consuming the good in question limited options to vary the way of acting. This evoke specific patterns of behaviour of the different functional groups of actors ? planters, merchants and consumers. The interaction of these patterns determined the market development in the course of an external shock: It shows that the market was not necessarily heading straight back to the former equilibrium as neo-classical opinion might suggest. Instead the adaptation crisis could transform the preferences of the market participants, finally resulting surprisingly in an ex-pansion of the market. Instead of obstructing market development, economic crises could push the growth of markets for colonial goods beyond their linear path of expansion and thereby serve as a partial explanation of this very expansion.
The settings of trading, producing and consuming certain colonial goods, which underlay these patterns of behaviour and market development, changed during the 18th and 19th centuries: Colonial luxuries turned in necessities even for the lower classes. The early mod-ern overseas merchant was ousted by vertical integration in the building of modern corpora-tions. More and more the state intervened in compensating market fluctuations. Markets in-tegrated, lowering the risk and depth of adaptation crises but enlarging the circle of actors affected by such crises.
These developments are well known, but it is less known when and to what extent they came into effect regarding the market situation. To shed light on this, a multivariate analysis of long-term wholesale price series, which exist for a large variety of commodities from the 1730s onwards for places like Hamburg and Amsterdam, has to be carried out. (Show less)

A comparison of macroeconomic policies in Austria, Hungary and Sweden in the aftermath of World War I shows that a state’s political culture had tremendous effects on the way governments confronted the economic and financial instability that was characteristic for the interwar period. Therefore governmental intervention and economic crisis management are reaction patterns that depended to a large extent on the past experiences of a society that not only shaped its political culture but indirectly also political action (Show less)

Economic crises are first and foremost characterised by extraordinarily high levels of unemployment.
In general there are two different ways in dealing with the problem of unemployment, known as "passive" and "active" labour market policy. The first method consists of the compensation for lost earnings through cash benefit systems while the second includes active job creation programmes and the effective matching of jobless workers with employers through employment exchanges.
In varying forms attempts of both strategies were started in Western Europe in the early twentieth century on a national scale. Despite the welfare state convergence that is frequently claimed, there is still much diversity across contemporary Europe regarding the running of unemployment insurance systems. How can these continuing differences in unemployment policy between European countries be explained? Since in many cases the first institutional decisions continue to have ongoing effects today, a historical approach to this topic was chosen.
All major industrialised Western countries introduced some form of public unemployment insurance before World War II. These systems took mainly two different forms: (1) compulsory insurance administered by government agencies and (2) voluntary, but publicly supported schemes administered by unions or union-dominated funds (the so-called Ghent system).
Great Britain was the first country to introduce a public compulsory unemployment insurance system. Due to the severe economic depression in the 1920s, however, the insurance system degenerated gradually into one of means-tested assistance with a strong control function of the public employment exchanges. This can be contrasted with the development in Sweden, where public unemployment insurance was introduced rather late compared to other countries and a voluntary, state-subsidised Ghent system was established.
Differences between these two cases did also exist with regards to the role of active labour market policies. Whereas debates on unemployment in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s were completely dominated by classical economic theory and the programme of full employment was only pronounced in the post-war era, in Sweden new Keynesian economic policies were adapted already in the 1930s.
To explain the relative success of Sweden's active labour market policy in comparison with the British experience, I will recur to the tradition of public works in Sweden and the differently perceived legitimacy of public labour exchanges in both countries. I will furthermore argue that the focus on active labour market policies rendered the question of "passive" unemployment compensation less important and thus gave voluntary funds administered by trade unions the possibility to maintain their traditional influence in this welfare state programme. (Show less)