Institutions and Government Growth: A Comparison of the 1890s and the 1930s
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Working Paper No. 2008-020B
26 Pages Posted: 28 Jun 2008 Last revised: 15 Oct 2009
Date Written: October 13, 2009
Abstract
Statistics on the size and growth of the U.S. federal government, along with the rhetoric of President Franklin Roosevelt, seem to indicate that the Great Depression was the event that started the dramatic growth in government spending and intervention in the private sector that has continued to the present day. Through a comparison of the economic conditions of the 1890s and the 1930s, we argue that post-1930 government growth in the United States is not the direct result of the Great Depression, but rather is a result of institutional, legal, and social changes that began in the late 1800s.
Keywords: Government Growth, Great Depression
JEL Classification: N41, N42, H2, H5, B1
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions
By Alberto F. Alesina, William Easterly, ...
-
By Timothy J. Besley and Anne Case
-
The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India
By Timothy J. Besley and Robin Burgess
-
The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India
By Timothy J. Besley and Robin Burgess
-
Elected Versus Appointed Regulators: Theory and Evidence
By Stephen Coate and Timothy J. Besley
-
Cents and Sociability: Household Income and Social Capital in Rural Tanzania
By Deepa Narayan and Lant Pritchett
-
Grandmothers and Granddaughters: Old Age Pension and Intra-Household Allocation in South Africa
By Esther Duflo
-
Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a India-Wide Randomized Policy Experiment
-
Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a India-Wide Randomized Policy Experiment
-
Land Reform, Poverty Reduction and Growth: Evidence from India
By Timothy J. Besley and Robin Burgess