Why did the electorate swing between parties during the Great Depression?

The Democratic Party's electoral success during the 1930s has long intrigued politicians and scholars. To gain new insight into that success, this paper examines the striking heterogeneity in county-level support for Roosevelt. Even though the Depression's effects and the New Deal's benefits were famously widespread, only some parts of the country responded with large and durable partisan shifts. One reason is that several factors, including pre-New Deal economic hardship, Dust Bowl conditions, and New Deal spending, appear to have had effects that were largely transitory (i.e., faded by 1940). A complementary reason is that swing electorates can, and did, swing both ways. By contrast, several other variables – notably economic and demographic factors discussed in the previous literature – are related to relatively durable shifts. Finally, heterogeneity in marginal responses may have mattered greatly to national-level Democratic success. By demonstrating which factors were transitory and which were more durable, this paper illuminates the New Deal Realignment and, more generally, the influence of economic conditions and distributive policy on voter behavior.     

The effects of the Works Progress Administration's anti-malaria programs in Georgia 1932–1947

From 1900 to 1950, malaria rates declined rapidly in the southeast United States. At its peak, malaria infected over 30% of the population. Malaria declined over the period for several reasons: improvements in public infrastructure; development of new insecticides; improvements in agriculture that promoted drainage; increases in incomes; and changes in migration patterns. This paper focuses on public works constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the 1930s and subsequent interventions during the 1940s. To estimate the relationship between these malaria programs and malaria rates, I construct a panel of annual county level malaria rates in Georgia from 1932 to 1947. Between 1932 and 1940 the malaria rate in counties that received WPA malaria projects fell from 25.9 deaths per 100,000 to 5.3 deaths per 100,000. The empirical estimates suggest that WPA malaria projects led to 9.1 fewer deaths per 100,000 or roughly 44% of the observed decline in treated counties. Additional public works constructed by the MCWA during World War II, and the introduction of DDT after 1945 completely eliminated malaria in Georgia by 1947.     

The New Deal and the origins of the modern American real estate loan contract

The fully amortized mortgage loan contract is an important instance of financial innovation in the U.S. residential mortgage market. We examine the adoption of this contract from the 1880s to the 1930s by building and loan (B&L) associations, the nation's most important institutional home mortgage lenders at the time. A chain of complementary innovations by B&Ls gradually reduced the costs of adopting amortization, supporting moderate use by the 1920s. During the crisis of the 1930s, the poor performance of the traditional B&L loan contract radically increased the benefit of adoption, as borrowers demanded the new contract. The adoption examined here occurred primarily in the conventional loan market because B&Ls, unlike other lenders, generally avoided the use of the new Federal Housing Administration insurance program. The New Deal may have had more impact through new federal savings and loan charters, which incorporated many of the complementary innovations that supported the new form of lending.     

Relief During the Great Depression in Australia and America

I compare and contrast relief efforts by governments in response to the extraordinary unemployment of the Great Depression in the US and Australia. The effectiveness of relief spending in America at the local level is discussed using recent studies estimating the relationship between relief spending and various demographic measures. I develop a new panel data set for the Australian states from 1929 through 1939. Increased income in manufacturing and rural production were associated with lower infant mortality rates and death rates and higher fertility rates. In contrast to the US experience, however, higher per capita relief spending was associated with lower birth rates.     

The effect of institutional regime change within the new deal on industrial output and labor markets

Markets during the New Deal operated under a number of different institutional regimes, which were marked by executive orders, the passage of various pieces of legislation, and Supreme Court rulings on their constitutionality. Specifically, we break the New Deal period into the following six regimes: the Hundred Days, the President's Reemployment Agreement, the National Recovery Administration Codes of Fair Competition, the Schechter era, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Under these various regimes industrial markets were subject to different regulations relating to hourly wage rates, hours of work, the nature of competition, and unionization. Vector Autoregressive (VAR) regressions are run using a monthly panel of employment, weekly hours worked, wage rates, prices, and output for 11 major industries. We find that key policy and legal changes were associated with large and statistically significant movements in economic variables. Furthermore, changes in institutional regimes impacted different types of industries unevenly. For example, low-wage industries saw the largest increases in wages, and drops in output, after the mandated wage increases in 1933.     

“十二五”时期安徽新型工业化目标测度及实现途径研究

2011年是十二五规划发展的开局之年,本着理论与实践发展相结合的原则,在科学理解和把握新型工业化的本质内涵和基本特征的基础上,结合安徽省第二次全国经济普查相关数据,文章就安徽省“十二五”时期新型工业化目标进行研究,并就如何实现该目标提出战略措施。