In this careful and thorough study of a Canadian field which has
been relatively untouched in recent years, Dr. Brecher records and comments on the
development of monetary and fiscal thinking in Canada in the inter-war period, and
its impact on public policy in the federal sphere. Examining Canadian opinion about
economic theory during this time, the author draws on four fields of thought: that
of government and other public officials; of businessmen, such as bankers, and their
views on what should be done about the depression; of the "radical group",
such as those prominent in the formation of the CCF and Social Credit parties; and
of economists, prominent in the universities.

Dr. Brecher points out in his
preface that his inquiry is rooted in the conviction that the problems associated
with cyclical fluctuations remain sufficiently complex to make an understanding of
the developments of the twenties and thirties an indispensable condition for
effective stabilization policy. He finds the twenties distinguished only in the
superficial and imperfect diagnosis of and remedial suggestions for unemployment,
made chiefly by a relatively small handful of thinkers associated with the
Progressive and United Farmers movements, then emerging in the West. It was the
thirties which, under the impact of the depression, witnessed the first real
stirrings of careful economic analysis in cyclical terms, and of statistical
techniques for measuring the value of annual productive activity and income receipts
in the Dominion.

The author has attempted to appraise the evolution of the
Canadian policy of monetary and fiscal stabilization within the thought environment
in which it was conceived and implemented, and on the basis of the standards set by
modern income-employment theory.

Irving Brecher (1923-2007) taught at the universities of Northwestern and McGill, where he was Professor Emeritus. He headed the Institute of Development Economics for the Third World and was named director of the McGill Centre for Developing Area Studies in 1963. He also worked as an economic consultant to the Combines Investigation Branch in Ottawa.

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