Crisis atlas / GBR / 1939

United Kingdom, 1939

One crisis episode: distinct crisis years merged across gaps of up to two non-crisis years. Types, source agreement, and macro context are drawn from the union of five primary chronologies.

Currency

Crisis years in this episode

Every distinct (year, type) event inside the 1939 window, with the chronologies flagging it and the count of agreeing sources. Start-year sources (GMD, JST) mark only the first year, so agreement falls in the continuation years.

1939
Currencygmd, rr2 sources

Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 (Müller, Xu, Lehbib & Chen 2025) | Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory R6 | Laeven & Valencia (2020, 2026) | Reinhart-Rogoff via HBS BFFS | ECB/ESRB Financial Crises Database Methodology

Laeven-Valencia banking-crisis detail

Laeven-Valencia reports fiscal cost and output loss for systemic banking crises only. This episode involves currency crises, for which no comparable cost figures exist in the source chronologies.

Macro context, 1932–1946

Seven years either side of the episode. Each panel has its own scale; the crisis window is shaded. Only indicators with data for United Kingdom in this window are shown. Bank credit growth (year over year in total loans) is available for the 18 Jordà-Schularick-Taylor advanced economies.

Inflation (% y/y)

Real GDP growth (% y/y)

Policy rate (%)

Govt debt (% of GDP)

Unemployment (%)

Current account (% of GDP)

Bank credit growth (% y/y)

Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 (Müller, Xu, Lehbib & Chen 2025) | Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory R6 (credit) Real GDP growth is derived as the year-over-year change in real GDP; current account and government debt are percent of GDP; policy rate is the central-bank rate; bank credit growth is the year-over-year change in JST total loans. Methodology

How each source dates this episode

The chronologies disagree on start years and durations. This table is generated from the event rows, not curated: it lists, per crisis type, which source flags which years inside the window.

Currency

Global Macro Database1939
Reinhart-Rogoff1939

Documented policy responses

1 intervention from the Metrick-Schmelzing banking-crisis database whose recorded year falls inside this episode window (1939). Each row is one documented government or central-bank action, tagged with the database’s own intervention categories and short code, under the crisis code it assigns. Matching is exact: same country, intervention year inside the window. The database’s global-crisis rows (no country) are never matched here.

GBR-1939United Kingdom

Sep-1939Regulatory forbearance / rulesSBH

Source: Metrick-Schmelzing Banking-Crisis Interventions Database (Yale Program on Financial Stability) Cite as: Metrick, Andrew, and Paul Schmelzing, "Banking-Crisis Interventions Across Time and Space," working paper, 2024 (dataset consulted 2026-07-10). License: Creative Commons attribution. Methodology

Policy-response case studies (external)

For qualitative accounts of how authorities intervened in systemic crises, see the Yale Program on Financial Stability New Bagehot Project, a library of financial-crisis intervention case studies. It is a separate qualitative resource; no specific case is asserted to match this episode.