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THE ECONOMIC downturn of the 1930s was worldwide. The magnitude of the contraction subjected all countries to a universal shock. For the very imperfect laboratory of the social sciences, this provides an unusual opportunity—a chance to measure national particularities through different responses to a common stimulus. While countries responded to the shock of the 1930s by changing their economic policies, the actual content of those changes differed. In some cases we find early forerunners of demand stimulus, in other cases more habitual deviations from classical orthodoxy, such as devaluation and tariffs. The differences have to do with politics, with the political context of the debate over demand stimulus.

Looking at the economic content of Keynesian policies defines the topic as one in the history of ideas. The innovation to be explained in this way is an intellectual one: who actually conformed to the policy …