Reinhart and Rogoff offer a couple of reasons for the difference in recovery rates: the slow policy response to the Great Depression and the gold standard, which meant that individual countries could not export their way out of depression. In other words, fiscal policy and the monetary-policy regime have a decisive influence both on the depth of the collapse and how long before the economy recovers.
但是，这并不是故事的全部。大萧条之后的复苏持续了10年，比二战后的平均复苏长度长一倍有余。莱因哈特和罗格夫给出了一些大萧条后复苏增长缓慢的原因：一是政策反应速度太慢，而是金本位（金本位意味着各国无法通过出口走出萧条）。换句话说，财政政策和货币政策机制在崩溃的深度和经济复苏所经历的时间长度上均具有决定性的影响。