Money view or credit ciew - Reasons for financial crises: How money view and credit view are seen in great depression and great recession in Finland, Sweden and the United States

Abstract

This Master's thesis evaluates two theories of banking and economic crises, the Money view and the Credit view, and reviews them from the Great Depression (1929-1933) and the Great Recession (2008-2009) point of view. The crises are studied by literature and using Finnish, Swedish and US data. The data is used to investigate how some phenomena of the theories and the crises, in question, appear in the data of the countries, in question. The studies in the original papers of the theories are not repeated. Based on the studies of this thesis it seems that the Money View, as Friedman and Schwartz (1963a) it describe, may have had a role in the United States in the days of the Great Depression, in 1930s, but may not have been exactly in the same role, in 2000s, during the Great Recession. The evidence of the Money View is not equally clear, related to the Finland and Sweden, during the Great Depression but money stocks have, at least, raised during the boom and declined after that in the time of the Great Recession in Finland and Sweden. The Credit view has had a role in many crises, as Reinhart and Rogoff (2009, 2011) report. However, based on this thesis, it cannot be exactly proved to be the main reason for the crises, in question, in Finland, Sweden and the United States. Yet, it is not the main purpose of this thesis to prove the theories as a cause of the crises but investigate how the phenomena of the theories appear in the data of the each country, in question.