Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
债务通缩与纳粹党的崛起
Debt deflation and the rise of the Nazi party
摘要
This paper examines the political consequences of debt deflation in interwar Germany. Debt deflation arises when falling prices increase the real burden of pre-existing nominal liabilities. We study this mechanism in the agricultural sector, where farmers had accumulated substantial nominal debt before 1929. In the face of collapsing agricultural prices and falling incomes, the high nominal interest burden made this debt unsustainable. To isolate the political effect of this shock, we exploit pre-deflation differences in agricultural debt and product mix across counties to construct a measure of debt deflation intensity. Our main finding is that rural debt deflation substantially increased support for the Nazi party, reflecting substitution away from agrarian and conservative parties. A one-standard-deviation increase in exposure explains a fifth of one standard deviation in the Nazi party vote share rise between 1928 and 1932. A counterfactual exercise suggests that without debt deflation, the Nazi party’s national vote share would have been insufficient to prevent less extreme parties from forming a majority coalition against it, rendering rural debt deflation a plausibly necessary condition for Hitler’s rise to power.
中文摘要
本文考察了两次世界大战之间德国债务通缩的政治后果。债务通缩是指价格下跌增加了既有名义负债的实际负担。我们研究了农业部门中的这一机制，该部门农民在1929年前积累了大量的名义债务。面对农产品价格崩溃和收入下降，高名义利息负担使这些债务变得不可持续。为隔离这一冲击的政治效应，我们利用各县在通缩前农业债务和产品结构的差异，构建了一个债务通缩强度的度量指标。我们的主要发现是，农村债务通缩显著增加了对纳粹党的支持，反映出选民从农业党和保守党转向纳粹党。暴露程度每增加一个标准差，可解释1928年至1932年间纳粹党得票率上升中五分之一的变动。一项反事实模拟表明，若无债务通缩，纳粹党的全国得票率将不足以阻止较温和政党形成反对它的多数联盟，从而使农村债务通缩成为希特勒上台的一个可能必要条件。