Two things: 1) It's a history book, not particularly an econ book, but "Nation of Deadbeats" covers this well. Each boom-bust cycle is actually quite unique, a

Two things: 1) It's a history book, not particularly an econ book, but "Nation of Deadbeats" covers this well. Each boom-bust cycle is actually quite unique, and most of them are caused by human action and not spontaneous. 2) In the 20th Century, just about all depressions, recessions and hyperinflations were monetary in nature. The ones that were not were due to failed states. A lot of this was due to the gold standard - which is nearly tautological - because since the gold standard was in play, we saw those pathologies. Douglas A. Irwin has a paper "Did France Cause the Great Depression?" that was an eye-opener for me. It actually describes a real mechanism.