The Impact of the New Deal on Local Economic Development

新政不仅为数百万失业工人提供了就业机会，而且还大大增加了国家的基础设施。如今，面对基础设施老化和公众对福利改革需求的双重问题，政策制定者经常引用新政式的工作救济项目作为有效解决方案的典范。尽管有许多关于新政政治的研究，但令人惊讶的是，很少有微观层面的分析，分析新政支出如何影响20世纪30年代的地方经济发展。为了帮助填补这一空白，本项目研究了新政对各种经济活动指标的影响，包括房地产财富、住房价值、零售销售、制造业活动、农业发展以及归因于新政的人口变化。该研究是NSF资助号SBR-9708098下开始的工作的延续。本研究的一个主要目标是利用美国各县支出的地理差异进行一系列研究，同时考察新政对当地经济活动的影响，包括支出资金所在县和附近县，以及影响新政资金分配的政治和经济因素。由于新政是在失业率极高的时期制定的，我们似乎有理由期待联邦政府的支出会在许多领域提振经济活动。然而，最近关于公共基础设施对经济增长影响的研究并没有明确地支持公共基础设施支出增加导致经济增长大幅增加的结论。也有可能是新政支出挤占了民间部门、州政府和地方政府的努力。通过一系列的经济活动指标，我们的目标是评估新政对当地经济的影响。由于该项目考察的是新政在相对较小的地理区域的影响，因此考虑到新政支出在邻县的溢出效应是很重要的。也就是说，人们可以设想这样的情况：一个县的支出要么促进要么阻碍邻近地区的增长。此外，溢出效应并不一定局限于新政支出的直接影响。周边国家的经济增长往往会影响周边国家的经济增长。此外，在一个县可能会有不可估量的经济冲击，可能会蔓延到邻近的县。衡量新政对当地经济的影响更加复杂，因为在大多数情况下，我们可能不能将新政支出纯粹视为外生因素。新政支出可能以相互矛盾的方式与经济活动相关。考虑到新政的既定目标，我们可以预期，新政将更多的资源分配给收入较低、失业率较高或增长较慢的地区。另一方面，许多新政项目要求州或地方政府有资源向联邦政府寻求项目帮助，或者更进一步，提供配套资金来帮助为项目提供资金。因此，新政支出可能受到经济活动指标的积极影响。为了处理溢出效应和同时性问题，本项目开发了一个广义的三阶段最小二乘模型，该模型既包含了新政支出与经济活动之间的同时性关系，也包含了经验模型中确定性和随机成分固有的空间相关性。

The New Deal not only provided employment for millions of unemployed workers, but it also added significantly to the nation's infrastructure. Policy makers today, faced with the simultaneous problems of aging infrastructure and the public's demand for welfare reform, often cite New Deal-type work relief projects as a model for an effective solution. Despite numerous studies of the politics of the New Deal, there are surprisingly few micro-level analyses of how New Deal expenditures affected local economic development in the 1930s. To help fill this gap, this project studies the impact of the New Deal on a variety of measures of economic activity, including real estate wealth, housing values, retail sales, manufacturing activity, agricultural development, as well as demographic changes attributable to the New Deal.The research is a continuation of work that was begun under NSF grant number SBR-9708098. A major objective of the research is to use the geographic variation in spending across U.S. counties to perform a series of studies that simultaneously examine the impact of the New Deal on local economic activity, both in the county where the monies were spent and in nearby counties, and the political and economic factors that influenced the distribution of New Deal funds. Because the New Deal was instituted during a period of extremely high unemployment, it seems reasonable to expect that the federal government's spending would have bolstered economic activity in many areas. Yet, recent work on the impact of public infrastructure on economic growth does not unambiguously support conclusions that more spending on public infrastructure leads to substantial increases in economic growth. It is also possible that New Deal spending crowded out the efforts of the private sector and state and local governments. Using a series of measures of economic activity, our goal is to assess the impact of the New Deal on local economies.Since the project examines the impact of the New Deal in relatively small geographic areas, it is important to allow for spillovers from New Deal spending in neighboring counties. That is, one could envision situations in which spending in one county either enhanced or hindered growth in neighboring areas. Moreover, the spillovers are not necessarily confined to the direct effects of New Deal spending. Economic growth in neighboring counties often influences economic growth in the county of interest. In addition, there may be immeasurable economic shocks in one county that might spill over into neighboring counties.Measuring the impact of the New Deal on local economies is complicated further because in most cases we probably cannot treat New Deal spending as purely exogenous. New Deal expenditures might have been related to economic activity in conflicting ways. Given the stated goals of the New Deal, we might anticipate that the New Dealers distributed more resources to areas with lower incomes or to areas with higher unemployment or slower growth. On the other hand, many of the New Deal programs required that the state or local government have the resources to seek help for projects from the federal government or go even further and provide matching funds to help finance the projects. Thus New Deal spending might have been positively influenced by measures of economic activity. To deal with the spillover effects and simultaneity issues this project develops a generalized three stage least squares models that incorporates both the simultaneous relationship between New Deal spending and economic activity and the spatial correlation inherent in the deterministic and random components of the empirical model.