Economists and Mortgage Relief in New Zealand in the 1930s

In: Australian economic history review: an Asia-Pacific journal of economic, business & social history, Band 37, Heft 1, S. 54-68

Abstract

This article recovers domestic economists as important intellectual influences underlying mortgage relief policies enacted during the Great Depression in New Zealand. It examines the opposing policy prescriptions of Professors Barney Murphy and Horace Belshaw on the economic effects of statutory reductions in interest rates and State relief measures; locates Mortgagors' Liabilities Adjustment Commissions' analyses of domestic factors contributing to rural indebtedness in the work of 1920s Canterbury economists; and, at a more quantitative level, questions the emphasis placed on nominal interest rate stability by officials involved in establishment of the Mortgage Corporation.