A Reassessment of Investment Failure in the Interwar American Economy

1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 479-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Bernstein

A radical shift in the industrial composition of investment and final demand played an important role in delaying a complete recovery from the trough of 1932. Under the conditions of technological discovery prevailing in the 1930s, this shift in the composition of demand made full employment virtually impossible to achieve as recovery from the crash got under way. A complete recovery required a mass of interrelated new techniques and human and physical capital which, in the timid financial environment prevailing after 1929 (and given the uncertainties of the New Deal), could not be organized on the necessary scale by private investment markets. These findings pose a new agenda for research on the political economy of the New Deal and on the economic history of the post-World War II era.

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-117
Author(s):  
T. Perga

The global economic crisis, which began in 1929, became one of the strongest in the 20th century and most of all, the crisis struck the USA. To overcome its consequences, USA President Franklin Roosevelt has launched large-scale reforms that are known in the history as the New Deal. An important part of this anti-crisis program was the improvement of the environment of the USA. In modern scientific discourse, there are different points of view regarding the motivation of these measures. In the article it is proved that President F. Roosevelt has not only pragmatic goals of creating additional jobs and reducing by thus the social tension in American society. Taking into account the aggravation of environmental problems, for the first time in the history of the USA, their solution was combined with the stimulation of economic growth. Innovative environmental projects (Tennessee Valley Administration, Public Conservation Corps) not only contributed to improving the USA environment, but also laid the foundation of integrated management of natural resources and created the basis for the development of a broad ecological movement after the World War II.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-71
Author(s):  
Samuel Milner

Abstract:Histories of American economic policymaking after World War II often describe a “Fiscal Revolution,” in which Keynesian macroeconomic tools replaced the microeconomic regulations and reforms of the New Deal. This article challenges that narrative by demonstrating how the Keynesian economists responsible for the Fiscal Revolution relied upon incomes policies to ensure that inflation would not sabotage efforts to achieve full employment. In the 1960s, the White House Council of Economic Advisers pressed the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to enforce “wage-price guideposts” in order to realize the potential of the Fiscal Revolution. Yet incomes policies also encouraged policymakers to deflect responsibility for inflation onto the private sector’s behavior as an alternative to adopting the painful but necessary fiscal and monetary restraint. As a reliance on the microeconomic control of inflation persisted into the late 1970s, this approach ultimately undercut the Keynesians’ macroeconomic promises and prolonged the misery of stagflation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254
Author(s):  
Andreu Espasa

De forma un tanto paradójica, a finales de los años treinta, las relaciones entre México y Estados Unidos sufrieron uno de los momentos de máxima tensión, para pasar, a continuación, a experimentar una notable mejoría, alcanzando el cénit en la alianza política y militar sellada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El episodio catalizador de la tensión y posterior reconciliación fue, sin duda, el conflicto diplomático planteado tras la nacionalización petrolera de 1938. De entre los factores que propiciaron la solución pacífica y negociada al conflicto petrolero, el presente artículo se centra en analizar dos fenómenos del momento. En primer lugar, siguiendo un orden de relevancia, se examina el papel que tuvo la Guerra Civil Española. Aunque las posturas de ambos gobiernos ante el conflicto español fueron sustancialmente distintas, las interpretaciones y las lecciones sobre sus posibles consecuencias permitieron un mayor entendimiento entre los dos países vecinos. En segundo lugar, también se analizarán las afinidades ideológicas entre el New Deal y el cardenismo en el contexto de la crisis mundial económica y política de los años treinta, con el fin de entender su papel lubricante en las relaciones bilaterales de la época. Somewhat paradoxically, at the end of the 1930s, the relationship between Mexico and the United States experienced one of its tensest moments, after which it dramatically improved, reaching its zenith in the political and military alliance cemented during World War II. The catalyst for this tension and subsequent reconciliation was, without doubt, the diplomatic conflict that arose after the oil nationalization of 1938. Of the various factors that led to a peaceful negotiated solution to the oil conflict, this article focuses on analyzing two phenomena. Firstly—in order of importance—this article examines the role that the Spanish Civil War played. Although the positions of both governments in relation to the Spanish war were significantly different, the interpretations and lessons concerning potential consequences enabled a greater understanding between the two neighboring countries. Secondly, this article also analyzes the ideological affinities between the New Deal and Cardenismo in the context of the global economic and political crisis of the thirties, seeking to understand their role in facilitating bilateral relations during that period.


Author(s):  
Kiran Klaus Patel

This chapter assesses the medium- and long-term effects of the New Deal through 1945 and beyond. Seen from this perspective, discontinuities leap to the eye. With World War II, American society lost the markedly civilian nature that had characterized it during most of the interwar years. The concept of security, so central during the early Roosevelt administration, acquired a fundamentally different meaning, shifting from domestic welfare to international warfare. But there were significant continuities. Many features of the New Deal lived on or hibernated during the war. The global conflict even saved and strengthened many existing programs that peace might have seen canceled or shelved. State attempts at social control over the body loomed large. The military, government, and other institutions worked to overcome the crisis of masculinity of the 1930s and create a hypermasculinized ideal, reflecting the country's rising status as a world power.


1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Brazier

The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA) has been sorely neglected in the history of the relationship of the political actors to the administrative state. There is no full account of the history of the APA, yet there is an increasing need for such a history. There is a growing literature paying renewed attention to the importance of administrative procedures in the politics of the administrative state (McCubbins and Schwartz 1984; McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1987, 1989; Moe 1989; Hill and Brazier 1991; Farber 1992; Mashaw 1990; and Bawn 1995). With all this attention being given to the importance of administrative procedure, it is about time to examine the history of the act that established the minimum standards of administrative procedure. The act regulates the procedures for adjudication, access to, disclosure of, and publication of agency information, licensing, rule-making, investigations, tenure of administrative law judges, and judicial review of agency action. Standard accounts of the APA's legislative history such as Galloway's (1946) have conveyed the impression that the APA was a noncontroversial, consensual piece of legislation that provided much-needed reform of federal administrative procedures. The actual history of this act involved a prolonged battle among the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the presidency, the legislature, and interest groups for political advantage in the administrative state that had been created by the New Deal and World War II.


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