scholarly journals How Successful Was the New Deal? The Microeconomic Impact of New Deal Spending and Lending Policies in the 1930s

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 1435-1485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Price Fishback

The New Deal during the 1930s was arguably the largest peace-time expansion in federal government activity in American history. Until recently, there had been very little quantitative testing of the microeconomic impact of the wide variety of New Deal programs. Over the past decade scholars have developed new panel databases for counties, cities, and states and then used panel data methods on them to examine the impact of New Deal spending and lending policies for the major New Deal programs. In most cases, the identification of the effect comes from changes across time within the same geographic location after controlling for national shocks to the economy. Many of the studies also use instrumental variable methods to control for endogeneity. The studies find that public works and relief spending had state income multipliers of around one, increased consumption activity, attracted internal migration, reduced crime rates, and lowered several types of mortality. The farm programs typically aided large farm owners but eliminated opportunities for share croppers, tenants, and farm workers. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation's purchases and refinancing of troubled mortgages staved off drops in housing prices and home ownership rates at relatively low ex post cost to taxpayers. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation's loans to banks and railroads appear to have had little positive impact, although the banks were aided when the RFC took ownership stakes. (JEL D72, E61, L52, N41, N42)

Author(s):  
Price V. Fishback

The New Deal was a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Roosevelt administration built an incredible array of public works and established a series of regulations, government insurance, and poverty programs that are still in place today. This chapter examines the research in the last two decades on the monetary and fiscal policies of the New Deal; the public choice aspects of the distribution of New Deal funds to states, cities, and counties; the state income multiplier; and the impact of specific New Deal programs on a wide range of other socioeconomic outcomes. In the process it describes anticipated directions for future research.


2011 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 366-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor M Kollmann ◽  
Price V Fishback

Many federal government housing policies began during the New Deal of the 1930s. Many claim that minorities benefitted less from these policies than whites. We estimate the relationships between policies in the 1920s and 1930s and black and white home ownership in farm and nonfarm settings using a pseudo-panel of repeated cross-sections of households in 1920, 1930, and 1940 matched with policy measures in 460 state economic areas. The policies examined include FHA mortgage insurance, HOLC loan refinancing, state mortgage moratoria, farm loan programs, public housing, public works and relief, and payments to farmers to take land out of production.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6877
Author(s):  
Eunji Choi ◽  
Jonghoon Park ◽  
Seongwoo Lee

Faced with an aging and declining population, many governments around the world endeavor to revitalize their rural communities in a sustainable manner. In South Korea, the Comprehensive Rural Village Development Program (CRVDP) was carried out from 2004 to 2013 as a key strategy to reinvigorate rural areas. This study aims to conduct an ex-post quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of the CRVDP in boosting rural households’ farm income. In doing so, the present study adopts quasi-experimental research design that is seldom utilized in assessing rural policies. As an alternative evaluation tool with flexibility for using readily available data, the study employed the combined application of the Heckman selection model and the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method. The study revealed a significant positive impact of the Program on farm income of rural households in the program-supported areas from both cross-sectional and longitudinal perspectives. A robust causal estimation of the impact of this bottom-up, multi-sectoral rural development program on farm income is achieved, which can be leveraged to widely promote similar type of rural development approach.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaehee Hwang ◽  
Jonghoon Park ◽  
Seongwoo Lee

An imperative challenge emerges from the demand to apply the scientific method in the assessment of recent agricultural and rural policies throughout the world. The objective of the present study was to conduct an ex-post quantitative evaluation of the Comprehensive Rural Village Development Program (CRVDP), a representative rural development policy operated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, a central government agency in South Korea. The primary purpose of this program is to ensure sustainable rural society. This study found a moderate but significant positive impact of the policy in enhancing the standard of living in rural areas. The present paper concludes with suggesting some policy implications, limitations and future directions of policy evaluation studies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-350
Author(s):  
Robert Leighninger

The New Deal, an outpouring of social policies formulated to combat the Great Depression, had enormous effects on American families. It also caused caseworkers to re-evaluate their roles in society. Using the lens of the journal The Family, this article will examine some of these self-reflections and briefly review the impact of New Deal policies on families. In general, caseworkers’ writings were focused more on the way policies were reshaping their profession than on trying to shape the policies themselves.


1970 ◽  
Vol 75 (7) ◽  
pp. 2143
Author(s):  
Otis A. Pease ◽  
Arthur A. Ekrich

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